How much do you relish travelling by Railways ~ and would that
change in any way, if you are to be denied the ‘window’ seat ? .. .. fortunately unlike air travel, passengers
not on window seat too can have unrestrained view from out of the window. Almost 3 decades ago, when I boarded a train
(travelling on transfer) many of my friends came to the Central Railway Station
to see me off, that is etched in my memory.
Those days, it was a tradition to ‘see people off’ and ‘receive people’
coming from other places. Remember that
in my +2 ‘Advanced English” lesson, there was a story on a woman who hires a
man to give a send-off [professional in seeing people off] at a Railway
station. Gone are those days !!!
How much do you love being lonely ! – may be for a shortwhile !!
in modern World of Facebook, ‘solitude
may be fine only to tell others with a post that you alone and enjoying it !’. though there could be people alone at the
top, survey often tells that our need to connect is innate, to have an
understanding life-partner is bliss and isolation can have a potent detrimental
effect on one’s mental and physical health.
Some say that even fish
suffer when they are along and there are society fish that enjoy flocking or
schooling together.
The news is : Britain
appointed a "minister for loneliness" on Wednesday to tackle what
Prime Minister Theresa May described as "the sad reality of modern
life" affecting millions of people. Tracey Crouch, a junior minister for
sport and civil society, will take on the role as part of a broader strategy to
combat loneliness in Britain. "For far too many people, loneliness is the
sad reality of modern life," May said.
"I
want to confront this challenge for our society and for all of us to take
action to address the loneliness endured by the elderly, by carers, by those
who have lost loved ones — people who have no one to talk to or share their
thoughts and experiences with," the prime minister added. More than nine
million people say they are always or often lonely, out of a population of 65.6
million, according to the British Red Cross. It describes loneliness and isolation as a
"hidden epidemic" affecting people across all ages at various moments
in their life, such as retirement, bereavement or separation. The ministerial
appointment follows a recommendation from a committee in memory of Jo Cox, a
lawmaker for the opposition Labour party who was murdered by a far-right
extremist.
"Jo
experienced and witnessed loneliness throughout her life especially as a new
student at Cambridge University and separated from her sister Kim for (the)
first time," the Jo Cox Foundation wrote on Twitter. "She would be
delighted by Tracey Crouch's new job as minister for loneliness and would be
saying 'let's get to work!'" the Foundation added. The prime minister was
to host a reception on Wednesday to celebrate the legacy left by Cox, whose
killing just days ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum shocked the nation.
Britain's
loneliness initiative will see a strategy published later this year, with input
from national and local government, public services, the voluntary sector and
businesses. So, the first ‘minister for
loneliness’ has just been appointed to tackle a problem that seems more common
by the day.
One
of them is reported talking in a way
that makes you want him to keep talking. His warm humour immediately puts you at
ease, which makes it difficult to process what he is describing: a period in
his late 20s, about two decades ago, when loneliness felt so engulfing he could
barely speak. He craved the company of friends, but when they visited, he gave
them cold cups of tea to make them leave. “I’d be at home absolutely desperate
to see somebody, but then all I wanted was for them to get out. I’d try to get
rid of them as soon as I could by not talking to them, being rude, the
cold-cup-of-tea tactic – all the while knowing that was not the thing that I
wanted,” he says.
This is how scientists identify lonely monkeys – they don’t look
for the monkey pottering around contentedly by himself; they look for the
monkey that hesitantly approaches the crowd then steps back, that makes
overtures to groom another, then timidly pulls away. In UK one
recent study found that more than nine million adults in the UK are either
always or often lonely.
A
loaner is reported as stating ~ : the
first two weeks in that bedsit were bliss, but it did not last. He quickly grew
isolated, paranoid and agoraphobic, unable even to pick up the phone to tell
the landlord his toilet was broken. Antidepressants didn’t help, but after 18
months he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his
time in the squat, and a course of cognitive behavioural therapy enabled him to
leave the flat for occasional temp work. He was surviving, but not living: “I
did well at all the jobs, but I had no chance with the people. I was in a state
close to panic whenever I had to talk to others. I felt I’d lost touch with my
old friends, even the ones who were always a lifeline, because they had so much
else to do. I managed to get all my worries down to just one: loneliness. I
felt hopeless and resigned myself to living the rest of my life this way.” But
after three or four years of serving visitors cold tea and not turning up to
friends’ weddings, something shifted. He tried to achieve one small thing every
day – even just getting out of the house to buy a pint of milk. “I read lots of
self-help pages on the internet with glib metaphors, likening your life to a
tree, but there came a point where I just said, well, I’m not a tree, and this
is absolutely no use to anybody,” he says. “I thought, soon the invitations are
going to stop coming, and the only way I am going to become the social person I
used to be is to actually be social.”
He
made a life-changing decision: he would say yes to everything. “It was horrible
to start with, especially the garden parties for their kids’ birthdays – I’d
think, what am I gonna do? Look at the state of me – I’m a socially incapable
freak. I was terrified. But I’d force myself to go. I was the weird guy sitting
in the corner making eye contact with nobody. But I stuck with it because I
knew that nothing would change without it. It was a slow and painful process,
but each time it got a little bit easier,” he says. Within a couple of years,
Steve felt human again.
In
UK, 360,000 people aged 65 and over have not had a conversation with friends or
family for a week. If one were to look
at loneliness, then at sense of purpose in life, and horse-raced them against one another and
asked, if you get a person who is high in both, which one wins? Happily, it
looks – at least in that particular analysis, subject to caveats – that you can
be socially isolated and disconnected, but if you feel you’re on a mission,
that trumps social poverty.”
Lonely
people don’t choose to be lonely; they’re often lonely as a defensive measure
against a world that they perceive to be threatening and hostile. If one has lost the confidence of being with
people, it would be too difficult to reconnect.
May be pets could be of some help, but more than fish or dog, it is
fellow- humans who could turn around. In Indian culture, there were days when everyone helped
each other, the Western World ridiculed it stating ‘lack of privacy’ ~ yearn
for those days, when your co-tenant, neighbour would take care of your
children, share their food and place too – now a days, people living in flats
do not even know their neighbour and most doors remain shut, keeping visitors
out and more importantly denying themselves opportunity to mingle with
people. Things have to change !
With
regards – S. Sampathkumar
18th
Jan 2018.
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