Loneliness in America?

Americans' circle of close confidants has shrunk dramatically in the past two decades and the number of people who say they have no one with whom to discuss important matters has more than doubled, according to a new study by sociologists at the University of Arizona. "The evidence shows that Americans have fewer confidants" said Lynn Smith-Lovin, one of the study's authors. "This change indicates something that's not good for our society. Ties with a close network of people create a safety net. These ties also lead to civic engagement and local political action."

The study compared data from 1985 and 2004 and found that the number of people with whom Americans can discuss matters important to them dropped by nearly one-third, from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Researchers also found that the number of people who said they had no one with whom to discuss such matters more than doubled, to nearly 25 percent. The survey found that both family and non-family connections dropped, with the greatest loss in non-family connections.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Loneliness-Is-Getting-Rampant-in-America-27518.shtml 

The problem with an art and spiritual blog, which I guess this is, is that I feel reluctant to write about anything "personal", even though I'm a believer in the notion that the "personal is political". And spiritual.  I think, for this post, I'll step outside of my own taboo.

Yesterday I saw something that happens everyday, but it stayed with me.

I'm staying near the Renfair in Los Angeles, working at the show. It's not like the old days, when we were an "encampment" that lived and worked together for months.........this show people turn up, or their employees turn up, do the weekend show, and go home. .

I was looking for a post office, which I found.  There was a long line, and a nice looking gentleman, with a badge that said "Allesandro" was the "maitre'd" of the operation.  In the section between the postal tellers and the long  line was an older woman in a wheelchair.......I could see that she often came to the post office because she knew everyone's names, and in that unfortunate and busy place, she was trying to engage the tellers and Allesandro with conversation by asking a lot of questions about mailing options, asking where the bathroom was, and making some personal comments in the hope of response.  The people in line were annoyed because she was taking up time, and space, and the tellers smirked.  Finally she apologized, and told everyone she was "under the influence of legal drugs", meaning I assume painkillers, and away she rolled, looking embarrassed, down the street.

I didn't think she seemed like a crazy person............on the contrary, she had an intelligent face and a pleasant voice.  She was just desperately lonely, and here was a place with people who were "familiar", and where the hum of  activity was going on.  She was like a stray dog, hoping for a scrap of affection or attention in a place where she surely wasn't going to get it.

Did I do anything?  No, but I sympathized.   I have a better social mask than her, and I have legs and a car, so I'm better off.  I can go look at stuff and talk to myself (quietly) at the library, or a mall, or at the beach if I so choose.    I'm here for a month, and well stocked with books.  I am resigned to the idea that other than on the phone, I'll pretty much not talk to anyone.   And because everyone I know is so busy, I'm reluctant to call anyone anyway.  No one has time anymore, do they?

Besides talking to customers, and telephones, I won't lose my vocal cords, however.  There will be a thousand ritualistic interactions with tellers that will go, as regular as clockwork: 

"How are you?  Find everything you were looking for?  Have a great day!"

and I will answer in the same ritualistic ways "Fine!  Yes!  Thankyou!".  

Once or twice, being ornery and  infantile, I've responded with things like "no, I was looking for enlightenment" or, "well, actually I have been having an out of body experience" .... but all that does is throw an uncomfortable cog into the machine which pisses them off.  O brave new world.

Out of the same kind of lapsed memory the poor woman in the post office has (I bet she once lived in a small town where everyone knew the postmaster)......I still go to coffee shops, and sit there with a cappuchino looking for a receptive face.  But I think that avenue to conversation closed long ago, with the advent of wifi.  I'm used to being invisible, which isn't such a bad thing at times.  Should I be embarrassed to even be sharing these thoughts?  Probably.  I'm a mask maker.  I should know better.

So how do you meet anyone in America?  Well, I guess most people do it through family and work.  People like the Post Office lady have fallen through the cracks, and are very difficult to see - am I the only one who saw her?

I don't think people still have cocktail parties or dinner parties or bars where you can hear each other over the pa system, but I could be wrong about that.   My work puts me on the road often, or in a studio alone.  Although I meet lots of people on my travels, it's rare to find people with time to engage in social ways, and when I'm in a situation like my LA show, I don't try anymore.  Yesterday I met to give some money I owed to a nice lady who lives here, has worked for me for 4 years, and it would never in a million years occur to her to invite me to her family's home for dinner.  Her daughter, who also worked for me, came with her, and in the course of our meeting she was texting somebody, which left no doubt in my mind about how uninteresting I was to her.    My former apprentice has had a mask business, thanks to me, for 7 years, and she's never found time to have a visit with me for longer than an hour, although she comes to Arizona every year.   I just lent some masks to a former colleague for a ritual event up north - she found time to write me an email thank you.  Would she find time to call me personally?  Nope, and I wouldn't expect it.   

I don't blame people, they don't have the lens that I have. I think if you asked the people I mention above what they think of me, at least two of them would say they love me.   They don't feel themselves becoming invisible, perhaps, not yet.   I wonder if I'm the only person who feels this way, sometimes?  Is it a failure on my part?  Probably. 


I once had a Facebook account, but I closed it.  The idea of having 500 "friends" I couldn't talk to or touch in any personal way, with whom I could only have the most trivial exchanges of superficial information..............got to me.  There were people there I once slept with, or gave birth to, or ate meals with, or they stayed in my house, or they own art I made.  Now our exchanges are limited to 6 words, with an "LOL" on the end.  We've already done away with the use of paragraphs (except, thankfully, in the eloquent world of blogs!).

And I still don't know what "LOL" means anyway.  I'm a complete anachronism.   I'm probably one of only maybe 5 people in the entire world who think Facebook is scary.  For some it's spiders, for me, Facebook.

 I know, I know, this is indulgent.  I should meditate, workout, take a long walk,  look up "meetup.com". You're a Lightworker, Lauren, buck up here, think Positive and Manifest, etc.

Meanwhile,  sometimes, the mask slips off, and I wonder.  Am I really any different than that lady in the Post Office? We're all in this together.        

I should have asked her  to have lunch with me.  But, I suspect, if I had, she would have looked at me with something akin to terror or suspician, and refused. Maybe I should have tried anyway.