Does loneliness have an antonym?
It has been said that loneliness has no antonym in any human language, and that a human life is, in the end, a solitary one. The American humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers studied human existence and the loneliness people feel in great depth. Why do we feel lonely? To this question he offered several answers. He believed loneliness has its roots in the distance between people that culture creates, in the brevity of life, and in our fear of intimacy. He defined loneliness as what arises when a person makes the effort to open their heart to another, yet is met with no understanding, or is rebuffed. Whether that definition captures the loneliness most of us have lived through is hard to say.
Still, there is no cause for despair. Rogers proposed a concept that stands opposite to loneliness: the feeling of being understood. Most of us have, at some point, felt a sense of resonance with a book, a film or a song. In each of these cases, the feeling of being understood eases our loneliness, and so it brings us happiness. When a person feels that another understands them with empathy, that their own thoughts are received and accepted, that sense of "you get me" is the very remedy that eases loneliness.
In the psychotherapy that humanistic psychology champions, Rogers set out three core principles, and empathetic understanding is one of them. Rogers held that this kind of empathetic understanding, the sort humanistic therapy advocates, is far from common. It is worth pausing to reflect: when we listen to others in everyday life, are we mostly just waiting for our turn to speak, rather than truly attending to what the other person feels?
The two kinds of loneliness
In the humanistic-psychology classic On Becoming a Person, Rogers describes two kinds of loneliness. The first is when an individual is out of step with their true self, and so a sense of distance and loneliness arises. Humanistic psychologists believe that people are born with a need for self-actualization; once our basic physiological needs are met, we go on to pursue self-actualization at a higher level. Rogers held that external conditional positive regard obstructs a person's growth towards self-actualization. Because, in order to win conditional love and approval from others, a person will give up pursuing what they are truly passionate about. If, for instance, parents only approve of their child's outstanding academic results, the child may readily abandon the art they love in order to earn their parents' conditional positive regard. Because of these external pressures they cannot live out their true self, cannot stay in touch with that self, and so a sense of distance arises. We should not blindly chase the approval of others and bury the self; instead we should devote ourselves to realising it.
The second kind of loneliness is the lack of any real capacity to connect with others, because being unable to accept one's true self becomes a barrier to communicating with anyone. Although "be yourself" has by now become an overused, clichéd line of self-help wisdom, accepting the self is a principle humanistic psychology emphasises. Rogers held that if a person cannot accept their true self, mental illness can more readily arise. When a person cannot accept who they really are, they cannot communicate genuinely with others, and find it hard to let anyone know their true self, and so loneliness arises. Perhaps the way to overcome loneliness should begin with accepting ourselves.
In closing
A lifetime is long, and there will always be moments when we feel lonely. But to live in this world, to form connections with others, to be accepted and understood — these are needs every person shares. As mentioned above, trying to understand and listen to others with empathy, exploring the true self, accepting ourselves and accepting others as they truly are, is the first step towards genuine connection. And once we learn to connect more truly with others, loneliness will not be quite so frightening after all.
Comments1 comment
alone
很有趣的觀點