[Lee Yongbeom's Psychology of Happiness] In the COVID Era, Those Who Enjoy Loneliness Win

<22> How to Overcome Loneliness

Iyongbeom Novelist

The novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) outbreak that began earlier this year seems likely to extend beyond the year. As social distancing continues for a prolonged period, more people are reporting mental distress. Gatherings are being canceled or postponed, and even at restaurants visited daily, people must maintain a certain distance while dining. Even when escaping crowded streets, benches to rest on are often not allowed. For those who cannot endure loneliness, this is a difficult time.

Loneliness is a chronic and malignant condition for modern people. Humans find being alone painful. Some feel lonely even when surrounded by crowds or even with their beloved family. Loneliness does not only mean physical distance from others. Humans are probably the only beings who feel loneliness even when surrounded by their own kind.

Long ago, ancestors punished members who harmed the community by expelling them from the group. In an era when the community itself served as a survival shield, expulsion meant death. However, today, the harshest punishment for humans is not expulsion but loneliness or isolation within a crowd. Isolation is tantamount to a social death sentence.

◆ Depression caused by social disconnection = Due to the COVID-19 situation, many businesses have shifted to non-face-to-face methods, resulting in an increase in job losses. Even aside from the pandemic, digital business methods will become more active in the future. However, even if digital methods replace human labor, they cannot replace humans' social nature.

The desire to escape loneliness is one of the most primal human desires. According to recent research by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), loneliness triggers cravings as strong as hunger. The researchers deprived 40 adults of food and all social contact for 10 hours. Afterwards, they showed the participants pictures of their favorite foods and social activities while scanning their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The results showed that the brain regions activated during hunger and loneliness were the same. Loneliness is as difficult a craving to endure as hunger.

Loneliness is the root of all illnesses. Studies show that lonely people catch colds more easily and their symptoms last longer. The more isolated one is socially, the weaker their immune system becomes. For social animals, relationships with others are directly linked to survival. Therefore, we desperately crave human connection. If we could escape loneliness, humans would do anything. That is why people constantly connect online, immerse themselves in internet games, and dive into virtual worlds.

Online activities may help endure loneliness to some extent, but they cannot stop the craving for human connection. Connecting to social networking services (SNS) does not reduce loneliness. A 2017 study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh surveyed users of 11 SNS platforms including Facebook and found that the more immersed people were in SNS, the deeper their loneliness became. Watching others' lives online intensifies loneliness.

It is a night relying on a stand lamp in a room barely over 2 pyeong. Although it is a night leaning on a single beam of light, there is no loneliness or sadness. It is a time to focus on the original knowledge based on the knowledge studied so far.

Loneliness: A primal desire and chronic disease
Research shows it is as painful as hunger

In these days of normalized social distancing,
digital communication only deepens loneliness

As experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, social animals living in groups are highly vulnerable to infectious diseases. Viruses spread exponentially through social networks. Viruses are life forms that best exploit humans' primal desires.

One social problem caused by COVID-19 is unemployment. Interestingly, unemployed people experience lower happiness on weekdays and higher happiness on weekends, just like employed people. Shouldn't unemployed people, who have no commuting worries, have no difference in happiness between weekdays and weekends?

In 2014, researchers at Stanford University analyzed data from over 500,000 people collected by Gallup to study leisure time and happiness. They discovered a surprising fact: unemployed people are unhappy on weekdays because their friends and family are all at work. They are happy on weekends because they can spend time with them.

Both employed and unemployed people spent about twice as much time with family or friends on weekends compared to weekdays. People who spent weekends alone, whether employed or unemployed, reported lower happiness.

In this sense, losing a job is akin to losing family or friends. Unemployed people are unhappy because they lack a job and even more unhappy because they must be alone when others are working.

◆ Becoming friends with loneliness = We are born with the fate to live with others. Therefore, we inevitably carry loneliness throughout life. Loneliness is a signal to reassess the human relationships one has. Ignoring it can lead to isolation and even death.

Loneliness does not discriminate by age. In 2016, researchers at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany found that people in their 30s and 50s tend to feel loneliness more acutely. People in their 30s are at the age of starting families. People in their 50s are at the age of launching children into independence. The consolation is that happiness gradually increases after the 50s. As people age, they find joy in small daily events and experience less emotional turmoil from unfortunate incidents.

Emotions spread like viruses to others. Professor John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago has long studied human social relationships and isolation. His research shows that lonely people drag others into the depths of loneliness. People who meet someone who is extremely lonely feel 50% lonelier than average. People who meet those who have met lonely people feel 25% lonelier. Even those who meet people who have met people who have met lonely people experience a 10% increase in loneliness.

Therefore, to escape loneliness, one should avoid people who are depressed or lonely. Instead, one must keep loneliness close and live with it like an old friend.

The degree of loneliness depends on experiences of being loved. People with secure attachment, who do not feel anxious when alone, differ from those with anxious attachment in two ways: one is the experience of having been loved, and the other is gratitude even for small acts of kindness.

Being next to lonely people makes you lonelier
Only by loving and giving first can you escape

The wise transform loneliness into solitude
To safely navigate this era,
one must befriend loneliness and become a 'joyful one'

We can love as much as we have been loved, and be loved as much as we have loved. We can be considerate as much as we have been kind, and be kind as much as we have been considered. Therefore, the way to escape loneliness is to love and give first.

Living as a loner is not necessarily bad. While not forming relationships may be disadvantageous to the individual, it can sometimes benefit society. In the biological world, loners exist in every group. All living beings benefit from grouping together for survival. So why do loners exist?

Group behavior can sometimes endanger the entire group. For example, animals that gather and feed together during an epidemic can become extinct in an instant. In such situations, only loners survive. Loners preserve the species and maintain the group even in crises where the majority suffer. Therefore, labeling loners as maladjusted is not a correct attitude.

The painful era humanity is going through demands loners from us. Unconditional disconnection and isolation leave deep aftereffects. However, to safely get through this era, one must befriend solitude and learn to enjoy it.

Paul Tillich (1886?1965), a German-born theologian, described loneliness as "the pain of being alone" and solitude as "the joy of being alone." Solitude is not a wall that disconnects one from the world. It is not a self imprisoned in a closet.

Wise people transform loneliness into solitude. Voluntary solitude places oneself at the edge of a cliff. Then, they reflect on relationships with others and purify themselves.

Novelist

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.