What I mean is, how do you deal with the logical conclusion that no one can ever truly be relied on and that you can always find yourself alone with no support?
Or do you disagree with this conclusion and think that some people can be relied on and that you can know that you won’t end up alone?
And if you are alone, how do you deal with the inherent human yearn for others when you know that you can never truly rely on them?
Edit: To clarify, I am talking about personal relationships and not about professional or paid help.
You join my cult
I’ve just gotten used to it
suffer well.
i don’t know, I’ve never been lonely, alone for sure but that’s often something I desire.
how do you deal with the inherent human yearn for others when you know that you can never truly rely on them?
flip that around, are you someone that can be relied on, they way you write this it seems every relationship is transactional for you?
Kind of a weird conclusion, but the answer is that I think I’m a very reliable person and I still don’t think anyone can be relied on, not even me.
People ca be relied on up to the point they can handle. You can’t expect someone who is barely getting by on an hourly job for example to take off work for some emergency or for someone living with a roommate to take you in without getting the roommates ok. There are plenty of people that I know that would love to help me in a variety of ways that are just not really feasible. I know there are friends I have had and we live in different states and such that likely remember me fondly as I do them. Heck I even have a brother not to far away and we help each other some but we both are married and our first repsonsibility is to our spouse and family. We do what we can. But yeah in the end we mostly die alone as others go before or after us. If we don’t die alone its usually a pretty horrible thing.
I have struggled with feeling lonely during different times in my life. I found I was attached to preconceived outcomes and some unhappiness I was feeling stemmed from that. When I stopped searching, I learned to find. I stopped trying to plug that hole and I sat uncomfortably in my loneliness. I’m definitely still a work in progress, but now I try to enjoy my time with people, to be more in the moment and less “10 steps ahead”. Now, most of the time, my loneliness doesn’t live on the surface, just in that occasional existential dread of knowing that one day I will have to die. I hope someone I love will be there to hold my hand, and I’m scared to be alone. That’s a heavy weight and I sometimes wish I was too stupid to recognize our mortality so I didn’t have to wrestle with it.
When I was young, I had my parents, grandparents, even great grandparents, and thought I always would. I was friends with a bunch of kids in the neighborhood and at school. I’m down to one parent and a super young and hip grandparent in-law in their 90s. When everyone was sick with Covid and my partner was feeling the stress too, there were times I felt very alone and I really felt the weight of having nobody to lean on in those moments because everyone was just as overwhelmed as me. It’s an uncomfortable part of the human experience. I try not to put all my eggs in one basket, but as an introvert it can be hard to maintain a large circle of support. Hopefully some of that answers the question. I’m curious how others see it.
I personally find the answer is quite simple, I just tend not to interact with people irl. People suck tbh and the most deranged toxic people I have met are irl, online I have my silly gay frens :3
That’s the neat part: I don’t.
I mean… I’m sure it’s possible that there are people out there that’d make it at least better more than 50% of the time. I don’t know about you, but I live in a low-density area (carless) and have no real viable options to meet… anyone really.
The other half of the story is that I too have a brain that isn’t really wired to do that anyway. I never really made friends in school and probably could live underground and would only go half as crazy as people normally do. Put my brain in something mostly mechanical and it’d probably be hard for most people to notice (especially with people not understanding the difference between robots and cyborgs).
Unlike a lot of people, even the internet isn’t really a social space for me either.
Consider a stack of solo cups. They’re tapered and designed to efficiently nest one inside another for efficient transport and storage. Though they are filled with each other, we still consider them empty. Because though they are designed to nest together, that’s not what they’re for.
You cannot fulfill your own life by filling it with similarly empty people.
Fill it with booze instead.
Poetry.
Journaling.
Make songs about the fact of the cruelty of this world of constant betrayals… and sing it alone. Maybe in front of a mirror so you feel like you are looking at a parallel timeline you and wont feel alone.
I have like lyrics written about the concept of secrets and betrayal and there is this one line that I’ve written I want to mention:
“你到底是谁，看不透你的心里
但没办法，生存依靠一起”Translated something like:
“Who the hell really are you, I cannot see through inside your heart [as in: your mind, what you’re really thinking]
But there’s nothing I can do about it, survival depends on us [humans] being together”So… just accept it…
Accept the fact that someone can declare their love for you and can totally stab you in the back
And be prepared for it
But try to not be too paranoid and accidentally shoot them first, careful of friendly fire
But at the mean time, enjoy the company of whoever you might have…
I’ve kinda accepted the fact the even my mom who constantly told me she loves me and I remember cuddling with her as a kid, could just totally do “bipolar” stuff that would harm me…
You need to have a shield… to be activated when you feel something isn’t right.
Find a way to help others. You’ll feel a part of something if you do. Being alone isn’t hard but being lonely is crippling. Even getting a kitten as a pet will alleviate some of that. All the best.
Being alone isn’t hard but being lonely is crippling.
Best comment out there.
Learning to feel comfortable with yourself and to be grateful to those who are with you in the present.
Everyone gets off the train sooner or later, including ourselves. Don’t worry about it, just enjoy the ride and the company of the moment.
This is generally my approach as well. I only find it problematic when I reach really tough times in my life and I find out that it is hard to just be with yourself.
I understand that feeling all too well. Do you really have no one by your side for those moments? It can be hard sometimes to tell the difference between perceived loneliness and “real” loneliness.
As an example, when I was a teenager, many of the times I felt lonely, I was actually isolating myself so as not to bother anyone. So, whenever something bad happened to me, I didn’t have anyone to help me.
Navigating hard times alone was never difficult for me. Finding myself alone during the good times is rough.
Try to let your “self” “die” when you can. I have trouble being around my “self” at times, and I’ve found the best way to deal with that is to let the part of you see as that “self” fall away from your mind and just exist. That little “death” can help you to be more in the moment and less in your own head dealing with whatever ruminations are rattling around in there today.
I definitely want to try psychedelics at some point to truly experience ego death/ego loss, but my methods work well enough for me.
I like the way you phrased that. I had a similar experience making peace with my mortality when I left religion. The self I “am” is just an illusion. It’s the link in a metaphorical chain that’s being forged. There were a lot of links before me and there will be many after me and every new link is shaped by the experience and skills the blacksmith developed from the previous links. I am not the link, but rather, I am the chain. Every action I take was made possible by the past and will echo into the future through the people I impact, the physical artifacts I create, and those will someday leave behind. One day the chain will have many links. Looking back from the newly forged links my link will become distant and less detailed, and yet, I am still the chain. Even if I am no longer known by name and everyone I ever knew has been dead for centuries, my actions will continue to echo until the end of time itself. That’s the only way I was able to make sense of it without resorting to woowoo metaphysics, deities, and such. It’s also why I feel it’s so important to be nice to people.
Now I’m wrestling with the nature of consciousness.
I hope you have a great day!
I contest that it is not a logical conclusion, and more likely you’re suffering from loneliness and not coming to that conclusion with a clear mind.
You want people to be “truly relied on”? What does that mean? At your beck and call with whatever whims one has? People can be reliable but there are limits. Unless you yourself think it’s acceptable to be everyone else’s gopher.
What’s your standard for being reliable that makes you, through a twisted facsimile of rationality, think you’re going to be alone? Why would someone have to meet that standard to give you company?
I think you are assuming a lot of things.
When I say someone to rely on, I mean someone who would show me that they want to be there for me when I’m going through tough times. I’m not even talking about necessarily being there for me, but knowing that there’s someone who cares and wants to be there for you.
I’m 100% sure some people can be relied upon. But only if it’s a two-way street. IF it works one way, it will only be once.
But think about it, you can never truly know, both for factors outside of their control and factors within their control. For example, they might get sick, they might die, they might get mental health issues that stop them from being a good friend. As well as factors within their control, they might decide to prioritize you less, they might decide that they just don’t want to do it anymore. You can never really be sure, even your best friend, your partner, your parent, your sibling, all of them can one day decide that they don’t want to be there for you, or that it’s not right for them. Even if you never gave up on them and was always there for them, they might not want or feel obligated to, or even if they feel obligated to, they might not act on it.
You are stretching it. T.ex. when someone -as you said- get ill or dies, you just can’t say they are unreliable because being dead is not very supportive to you.
Being reliable isn’t the same as being able to give the desired support. Someone is relieable when they make maximum effort -compared to the situation- to be there and provide whatever support they can.
Reliability isn’t black or white, there are varying degrees to it. Some people can be counted on more for some things than others. Some people can only be counted on in certain contexts or with proper preparation. You’ll never find anyone you could rely on 100%, I’d wager you couldn’t even rely on yourself that much.
How much you can rely on someone or vice versa isn’t what I would consider in my rubric for whether I’m alone or not. Sometimes you have to deal with things alone, sometimes you choose to. That’s just life. Support and help are nice when you can get it, but it’s your life in the end. You have to be the one to live it.
I’d only consider myself lonely if there’s no one I connect to and if that were the case, I’d look for new people. Eventually I’ll find someone I connect to in some aspect of our lives. Even if I can’t always talk to them about my struggles in that aspect, I’ll know they’re out there struggling too and that will give me some peace and validation.
I really like your perspective.
