Thread by @uncle_authority

sometimes I think about disconcerting as it was to see people back in 2020 confusedly reaching the end of their rope during what passed for a "lockdown" in the US — just a total inability to live with themselves in one way or another.

I'm a hermit. The "lockdown" didn't really change anything for me outside the massive spike in toilet paper prices. I've never had much of a problem sitting in silence and watching shadows get longer — this practice always came easy to me.

Kinda wish it didn't.

This isn't really a skill that anyone acquires after a rapid fire series of good things happens to them; this is the effect of the adaptive integration of loneliness into your life.

Though here "loneliness" is distinct from being "alone"

"Alone" meaning a physical separation from other people, "loneliness" nothing a sense or material condition of being unable to share in anything of meaning or significance.

Jung, a ghoul—perhaps/hopefully why he was able to write a decent definition:

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."

conveniently (it is Jung) there's not much in the way of morality or human decency obliged in the statement, I think most people are fine with the idea of people being compelled to bottle up 'inadmissible' views, whatever tf those may be...

I've no solution; it's only interesting to me that the ability to live with oneself and the ability to share what makes oneself content with living are separated to the point of near total mutual exclusivity

I'm sure we could figure something out if we could ever find each other