Loneliness - Why It's So Common, and What You Need to Do
By Royane Real
Do you ever feel lonely? If you do, you may spend a lot of time wondering
what’s wrong with you.
It may seem as if everyone else but you has lots of friends. It may seem
like everyone else is always getting invited to go to exciting parties. And
it may seem like you're the only one who is left at home, waiting for the
phone to ring, wondering why no one ever calls you to invite you out.
Actually, loneliness is much more common than you might think. There is
actually an epidemic of loneliness in many societies today.
This may surprise you.
After all, so many millions of us in the modern world are jammed close
together in large teeming cities, and we have at hand all the technological
conveniences that are supposed to bring people closer together, such as
e-mail, telephones, faxes, and the Internet.
Why are so many of us more lonely than ever?
The reason is that society has changed very rapidly in the past two or
three hundred years. Many of the social factors that used to make it easy to
make and keep friends for a lifetime have disappeared.
Families have changed a lot in recent decades. A hundred years ago, most
families were very large, with many children, aunts and uncles and cousins
living close by. Family members often worked together on the farm or in a
family business all day long.
Today, families have shrunk in size. Family members are now so busy with
their own separate projects, they rarely see each other. Families break up
more often than they used to, and it is now much more common for family
members to move thousands of miles away, to new jobs, new wives, or new
husbands.
In the past, people used to live in the same small community for their
entire lives. They stayed in the same job for decades.
These factors made it easy to make friends and keep friends.
Today, many people change jobs every few years, and they move to new
cities, and leave behind family members and friends.
And many people today are very, very busy. In many ways, modern
technology has not freed us from having to work harder. It has actually had
the opposite effect of making us work harder and faster just to stay in the
same place.
Another factor that contributes to increased loneliness is modern
entertainment and communication technology.
Before the advent of television and the Internet, people had ways of
having fun together every day. Many of these primitive methods of having fun
have almost disappeared in the modern world.
In the old days, people used to actually talk to each other! They would
play games together. They would make music.
Now this sort of primitive entertainment only occurs during a power
outage. Most people now feel lost without a TV set and computer. Even in the
same family, people barely know each other.
The increase in these modern forms of communication have actually
decreased other forms of human interaction.
As people spend more time on the Internet, or with their text messaging,
or playing games on computers, they are spending far less time actually
interacting with the people around them. It has become a lot easier for
people to cocoon themselves in their homes, and never see anyone.
Many people are actually spending less time developing their social
skills while they may be vastly improving their computer skills.
In the modern world it seems almost everyone is pressed for time. We are
often far too busy at work to develop friendships, and when we come home
exhausted at the end of the day, we are too tired to make plans to
socialize.
Some of us live in neighborhoods where it isn’t really safe to go out
after dark. It becomes all too easy to eat a quick supper and spend our
evening hours mentally decompressing in front of the television set or
computer.
Loneliness is a bigger problem for more people today than at any previous
time in history. The truly ironic fact about loneliness is that if you are
lonely, you are not alone!
Still, even if you have been lonely in the past, and even if you feel
lonely today, it is possible to make new friends in this modern world.
If you have been suffering from loneliness, it’s time to stop blaming
yourself, and it’s time to stop blaming the rest of the world. It’s time to
do something to solve the problem of loneliness.
You can make new friends and have the social life you dream of. To have
more friends you will have to learn new techniques of socializing and making
conversation. You will have to make the effort to meet many more new people.
If you learn the secrets of those people who make friends easily, and
implement these techniques into your life, you too can have a happy social
life.
Your loneliness will be a thing of the past!
This article is written by Royane Real, author of the new downloadable
book "How You Can Have All the Friends You Want – Your Complete Guide to
Finding Friends, Making Friends, and Keeping Friends" If you want to have
more friends in your life, get it today at
http://www.royanereal.com
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