Never Write Alone
Life Lesson from the SSG
🕑 30 minute read || Updated July 15, 2024 || by Daniel Norther
Preview
Alone… The saddest word in any language.
This lesson in one sentence: Loneliness is the deadliest danger to us, so let’s defeat it with love!
Now we discuss why we can’t let ourselves be alone.
We are not alone.
Aloneness is an illusion that can be dispelled.
Let’s destroy this illusion.
Lesson
Part 1: The First Monster
Loneliness.
The most painful word in every language is “alone”. Even aliens from other galaxies would have to agree that “alone” is the most unbearable word.
Being alone kills more stories than anything else.
When we feel like we are the only person in the world, we are trapped under an illusion. Let’s destroy this illusion. It’s easy to destroy. It always comes back, though. We’ll have to kill it at least 1,000 times in our lifetime. Storytellers are as vulnerable as everyone else to the illusion of loneliness, but they become good at using characters to kill loneliness. Good characters, good people, and good stories can kill loneliness more effectively than nuclear bombs.
Defeating loneliness is the greatest struggle for every human. Fighting loneliness is the hardest fight for every living thing. No living thing wishes to be alone. No living thing can survive constant loneliness.
This is the most important lesson for survival. One hundred billion years will go by, and this lesson will still be the most important. Two billion worlds could come and go, but this lesson will still be the most important. Three quintillion humans may rise and fall, and this lesson will still be the most important for their survival.
Loneliness was the first monster, and hunger was its first child. None of us is ever safe from this monster. Because loneliness isn’t just a feeling. Feelings are always more than feelings. Loneliness is a bomb in our heads. Even those of us who we think would be totally immune to this disease can die from it very easily. We can be big, or strong, or hardcore storytellers, or powerhouses, or reliable heroes. No matter who we are, loneliness can kill any of us. It’s not a bear, or a shark, or a dragon.
It’s always worse.
No other monster is bigger than loneliness.
Loneliness is the king of monsters that has killed more storytellers than time itself.
Every storyteller needs to know about The Garden of Beasts. Loneliness was the first monster to ever enter the Garden of Beasts. The Garden of Beasts is where all evil began. The Garden of Beasts is every interpretation of “hell”. Every living thing feels hell in the same way but imagines it uniquely. It was where fangs and claws were born. All evil is bad luck combined with greed and fear. The first predator ate something innocent, thinking that eating would fill its void, not realizing that anything capable of eating good has already eaten itself. The Garden of Beasts is not a place, but a feeling that destroys places. The Garden of Beasts vanishes and reappears from time to time, and the monsters go with it. The monsters in the Garden of Beasts are not certain in shape, because they never live long enough to define their shapes. The monsters in the Garden of Beasts wish they could have identity, but do not know how to build identity. Evil wants to survive but does not know how.
Love is indestructible. Changes made by love can only be changed by more love. Progress made by love is permanent, but all else fades.
Loneliness is the ultimate monster that has given up against isolation and has let its despair become its only purpose. When anything believes despair is the only truth, then it believes destruction is the only positive outcome. The monster is illogical and refuses all logic.
Loneliness is illogical. If our senses were perfect, then we would always know we are never alone. Logicality always defeats illogicality eventually.
Loneliness is the absence of love, while love is only love. Love can exist without loneliness, but loneliness cannot exist without love. Good can exist without evil.
Love always wins. The Garden of Beasts is destined to be destroyed, and loneliness with it. All destroyable things will inevitably be destroyed by or integrated with, but not eaten by, indestructible things. Loneliness, like all evil things, wishes to be destroyed and integrated. Loneliness, like all evil things, does not understand the nature of integration, so it does not understand positive destruction or positive change, but is starving for both. Infinite hunger is the result of complete loneliness. Loneliness becomes a creature that is nothing but claws and mouths. Loneliness is the primeval force that wants to bring everything into a single point, and it attempts to do this by eating everything, including itself. The most evil sentence in all existence is, “All must be one.” The most good sentence in all existence is, “All must be.” This formula describes evil’s end. This is the ultimate result of love, which destroys the ultimate monster.
Love brings the destruction of loneliness. Love is our instrument. Love is eternal. Love never dies. Love never fades away.
Part 2: Self-Isolation
Don’t eat bad stuff. We must not bring loneliness into ourselves. We must not isolate ourselves. It is bad enough that the world can trick us into believing we are the only person who can understand us, but it is even worse when we betray ourselves by believing that we should be the only person who can understand us.
Never believe that loneliness is “meant to be.” No suffering is “meant to be.” Nothing bad is “meant to be.” If it was “meant to be” then it would last forever, which it won’t. Self-isolation is a monster that can kill us. Self-isolation is as deadly as putting a hungry polar bear in our bedroom and hoping that it will go away on its own. Self-isolation is the deliberate act of pushing ourselves away from everyone. Sometimes we have to escape from people who are not good for us.
Total isolation brings us closer to death. I used to think that total self-isolation could be a useful tool, but I was wrong. Escape from bad people is not self-isolation, but running from all of humanity is. Selective isolation can keep us away from bad people, stupid people, or insane killers, but total self-isolation is more likely to kill us than insane killers, stupid people, and bad people combined. We must isolate bad people from us, but we must never isolate ourselves from everyone. Total self-isolation is like cutting off our heads to stop a headache. Total isolation is not the cure for anything.
Even a quarantined plague victim needs to read stories to stay sane. The plague might kill him. Isolation will definitely kill him. To keep him alive, give him some food and good books. Stories are the defense against isolation, like medicine is the defense against disease. Total self-isolation is like burning our house down to kill a spider.
Positive Escapism is good, but we need to know how it differs from Total Self-Isolation. In this context, Positive Escapism means “to escape loneliness through stories.”
Storytellers are escapists. We are escape artists. We fly away from the world and get immersed in stories to learn how to live in the world. We get hurt, run to our imaginary friends, learn together, then return with a vengeance to right the world’s wrongs. This is the purpose of stories. Nothing is wrong with escaping. Nothing is wrong with tactical retreats. Nothing is wrong with running away to fight another day. Everything is wrong with deserting the things that need to be loved and protected. We are all runaways, but none of us are destined to be deserters. Runaways are smart fighters, but deserters are slaves to fear. No matter how many times we run away, we must never give up. Do not hide from the world, but give the world a hiding. (“To give a hiding” means “to beat up”.)
Self-isolation hurts. What happens to people who totally self-isolate? There is a Japanese word for this: “Hikikomori.” Hikikomori means “severe social withdrawal”. Imagine losing all our friends, all our contacts, and all our social knowledge from one sweep of the executioner’s ax. This is extremely dangerous. I know firsthand what it feels like. It was like a volcano of negativity building up inside me. It is becoming more common in the world, because technology has pushed us deeper into ourselves. We are slowly crushed. Our brain begins to die. Our imagination begins to die. Suicide is the worst and most advanced form of this sickness. Suicide begins to grow in us like a tumor. We need to shine the light of friendship on this tumor, like using radiation to blast cancer cells.
Feeling weak hurts. Self-isolation only weakens us. We must never hurt ourselves; Well, sometimes we have to hurt ourselves, but only if we’re saving someone. We must not tolerate being hurt by others; Well, sometimes we have to get hurt by others, but only if we’re saving someone. A lonely storyteller is a weakened storyteller. Characters are the cure for every storyteller’s loneliness, especially when we struggle to find real friends.
Self-isolation is a killer. Living alone can be deadly. Living with the wrong people can be deadly. In any bad situation, books can always be our friends. Books can be weapons, shields, floatation devices, and even clothing.
We must never tell ourselves that we are alone. Fight isolation like fighting back the cold winter air. Find warmth with characters and their stories.
Be careful of Delusions. There are some universal reasons why we self-isolate, but these are always delusions. Before we talk about the reasons for self-isolation, let’s reveal the cures:
Read books.
Look for fun that makes us stronger.
Remember what we love.
Reason 1 for self-isolation: “No one cares.” This is a common complaint from a lonely mindset. This is a misunderstanding about humans. We must remember that most of us care, we are all stupid, and we all need help. It would be impossible to save the world if no one cared, but enough people care that the world will be saved. We must give each other the goals for saving the world. We must accurately describe problems, then fix them. Every good act is obtainable. There are countless varieties of the phrase, “No one cares,” and none of these are more than 49% true:
“No one cares about me.”
“People don’t care about each other.”
“Humans are evil.”
“Everyone in the world is either stupid or evil.”
“Everyone needs to change but they can’t be changed.”
“I am the only person who has ever watched Grave of the Fireflies.”
“The world is evil.”
“They only care when it happens to them.”
“I need to save the world but I can’t because no one is helpful.”
“There’s no point if they care, because it won’t be enough.”
“I am better than the others because I care more.”
“I am the messiah.”
“I am the savior.”
“Nobody has time to be good.”
“I am the Übermensch but no one else is.”
“If my love dies, then the world dies.”
We can get stuck thinking that “nobody cares.” Everybody cares that the world is burning, and everyone desperately wants the power to do something about it. There is an irresistible sweetness in good power, and we have to taste it, we gotta have it. We all make the mistake of thinking that we’re the “only one who knows what it feels like.” I used to think nobody cared, until I realized how depressed we all are to save the world. We want to save the world so badly that we’re willing to live in loneliness and despair in the hope that we’ll get a chance to change something.
“I’LL SHOW THEM! I’LL SHOW THEM ALL!” Anyone who says they don’t care about the world is only admitting that they can’t bear to look at their lack of power, because we know instinctually that a lack of power leads to losing everything, and we can’t endure looking at our naked weakness. We must teach ourselves to look and laugh at our weakness. As soon as an apathetic person gets a little bit of power, they always suddenly want to change everything and be the savior god. We need to accept responsibility. Then we can become strong enough to save the world and be happy forever.
It is never true to say, “No one cares,” because human beings care so much that we can’t even tolerate the pain of how much we care, and we have heaven on earth when we are strong enough to change something, and we have hell on earth when we are incapable of changing something. To survive, we have to learn how to get power and the intelligence to share it, and then we won’t be depressed liars. Religion is the desperate attempt to feel powerful enough to save the world. It is our human impulse to save the world.
“No one cares” becomes “I’m better than everyone” very quickly, and that’s dangerous because lies are dangerous and neither are true. This is a death sentence for stories. I have seen many wannabe writers hold themselves back by thinking they are hot shit when they are only hot garbage. I myself once thought that I was super important and special. My schizophrenic father convinced himself that he was the most important savior of mankind, even though he was only capable of wanting Filipino women.
It is lonely at the top, but we are not going to the top. We’re going to the bottom. We’re going into the Underworld. We’re going to hell, and we are going to conquer it.
All the true heroes are fighting evil in the mud, while all the fakers are sitting in ivory towers. Good writers search through mud, while bad writers climb lonely towers. It’s not lonely in the mud. It’s lonely in the towers. Do not live in towers.
Know the difference between Working in Solitude and “being alone”. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy amount of solitude, so long as it’s a good place to get work done. Some of us look for solitude, but that is not the same as self-isolation. Solitude is peace with ourselves. Self-isolation is war with ourselves.
If solitude is making us stronger, then it’s good. If solitude is making us weaker, then it’s bad. Bad solitude is like being lost in the dark. Good solitude is like chasing a light at the end of a dark tunnel. Bad solitude is self-isolation. Good solitude is tactical retreat. Solitude is feeling peaceful in an empty room, but “being alone” is feeling like an empty room is eating us.
There is a difference between monasticism (holy solitude) and self-isolation. Monks and holy people may need to look for quiet places to think. But no one should look for lonely places to think. Quiet contemplation is meant to teach us how to sing loudly with others. Quiet contemplation is not meant to teach us how to live without others. A holy man who wastes his life alone has no holy power. A philosopher who is spending his life alone needs to either get a job or make one for himself. Nothing teaches us how to find jobs we like quite as effectively as having jobs we hate.
Looking for happy solitude can be good, but if we aren’t careful it can turn into a poisonous temptation. Resist the temptation of Isolation. Resist the temptation of unnecessarily long escapes. NEVER let our writing isolate us from society and people we care about. Society is crazy, and we need stories to escape it sometimes. Stories are supposed to give us escapes, but our escapes must not be permanent. Stories are supposed to give us the tools to fix society. Society is fixed by fixing the individual. Stories fix the individual. Good art fixes the individual.
Don’t let isolation be an excuse for thinking all humans are either bad or stupid. Humans have at least a 51% likelihood of being good. Stories are meant to be shared. We need to share our stories with at least 51% of humans.
Give the right kind of escapes. When we are good storytellers, we help each other escape. Storytellers cover each other during tactical retreats. We storytellers hold open the door to salvation. The door to salvation is an emergency exit that leads into an armory full of weapons and hugs, and then we go through a slide that sends us back into the fight. This is what good storytelling does.
Never self-isolate if positive connections are available. We have to self-isolate when every other option is dangerous, and then we have to maneuver out of harm’s way, and then we have to resurface, but we can’t let ourselves isolate any longer than is necessary.
The desire to self-isolate always comes from fear, and fear is good when it keeps us safe, but when fear gets out of control, it becomes the danger. I’ve seen what fear does to the mind. My father was mentally ill, and very abusive. He isolated himself from society by hiding from everyone, nailing boards over of his windows, and blocking out all sunlight. Things did not go well for him. Building walls will never shield us. The sword of truth is always naked, always talks, and loves the sky. We must never teach ourselves to fear.
Never say, “I’m better than everyone.” Another dangerous kind of self-isolation is believing that we are better than we think we are. Power fantasies are unhealthy if they are selfish. Power fantasies are healthy if they build others up, not just us.
Poets should never write more than one poem about their loneliness, then revise it over and over. However, poets are welcome to write as many poems as they want to about everyone else’s loneliness. One poem about our neighbor’s loneliness is worth a hundred poems about our own, because one is caring and the others are just downright excessive. Self pity never helps anything. We need power, not pity. We need love, not pity. We only need to scream our pain into the universe once for it to listen, but we need to scream the pain of our fellows a hundred more times before the universe will listen. This empowers our neighbors, and when we empower our neighbors, we empower ourselves.
George Orwell wrote “1984” all alone, dying from tuberculosis, while he lived on a small British island. He wasn’t alone. He was thinking all day about his countless life experiences, everyone he had ever met, and the audience he was speaking to. He was alone in a room, and was lonely, but was not destroyed by the loneliness. He was with characters all the time. He made light in the dark. He said what needed saying. George Orwell was practicing good solitude. He needed to be alone to work, and there were no other options since he had a deadly and contagious lung disease that eventually killed him. When he was alone, he fought the loneliness. Do that.
Turn isolation into togetherness. This is the most beautiful skill of any storyteller. Turn misfortune into fortune. Sometimes we are punished with isolation even though we have done nothing wrong, like if we are born into a very stupid society. Instead of wanting solitude, want progress. Isolation is not being the only person in a room. Isolation is feeling alone. Isolation is a feeling, not a place. Nothing is lonelier than being a good person in a bad crowd, but this gives us the chance to make waves among the peasants. See the wild opportunities. Turn swine into men, and cows into women. They won’t know what hit ‘em. Turn these cowards into warriors. Turn this trash into treasure. Turn our lonesomeness into togetherness. If we really are “better than them” then it’s our job to love them, teach them, and show them how to reinvent themselves. By doing this, we become reinvented. It’s the best survival tactic. “The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.” ~ Sun Tzu
Understand that isolation destroys stories. Stories destroy isolation. Stories are more powerful. Even mediocre stories can beat the fiercest loneliness. Cure isolation by reading many books and loving many characters. It works even when you don’t have any friends, trust me. It becomes the opportunity to make friends in real life. Remember that the only good reason to enter isolation is to destroy it.
Know that isolation is a waste of time. The age of the internet is here. There are unlimited sexy stories at our fingertips. We have no time to waste on self-pity and loneliness! We have to absorb all the beautiful stories and become gods. We can’t let loneliness take away a single page of these beautiful stories. Nothing is sexier than goodness, and all our sexy thoughts become sexier when we do what is right. We don’t have time to give up against loneliness. Fighting loneliness is never a waste of time, so if we never stop fighting then all our days will be spent wisely, and if we spend all our days wisely then we’ll never run out of days.
Never believe that Storytelling is meant to be lonely. Storytelling isn’t supposed to hurt. Storytelling is never as painful as silence. If telling stories makes us feel lonely, then we’re doing it wrong. This is always true. If telling a story is painful, then change the method again and again until it feels good in a moral, spiritual, and permanent way.
Tell stories that are roads into the world. Storytelling does not bring the world into us, but puts us into the world. Storytelling doesn’t push others away from us, but sends us to others. Write stories that are ways back in, not ways to back out.
Don’t let pride kill the party. Storytellers don’t make parties happen, and we don’t host them either. S storytellers, we only attend the party. It’s sad when we, as storytellers, confuse ourselves with the party. When we think we are the party itself, then we’ve shifted focus away from what matters. The whole point of loving others is to that we do not end up feeling like we are the center of the universe, because being the center of everything would mean being alone forever. Good parties are fun ways to fight loneliness as a group, but no party is fun when there’s only one dancer, even if that dancer is the greatest dancer. We were not here when the party began, and we will not be here when the party is over. Keep the party alive for as long as possible by keeping the spotlight on things that matter instead of pointing it at our own eyes and blinding ourselves. Good parties happen when everyone brings some of the fun, while bad parties are when the fun is with one or none. A singularity is the same as a big empty universe. Never party with bad people. Always try to party with good people. Try to let every character show what good they’ve got. Try to give everyone a chance to dance.
Fight the cold. Stephen King (a famous writer) describes stories as a bunch of characters building a campfire. Every character brings firewood to add to the fire. When all the characters have given their piece, the fire is a warm sun that fills the void. Here, we find perfection in the diversity of life. We find infinity. We become infinite. Evil wants all things to be the same. The ultimate evil wants all things to be one thing. Good wants all things to be unique. The ultimate good wants all things to be. The difference, the uniqueness, the identity is what makes infinity possible. We each make a difference. The differences between us hold the cure for loneliness. When the differences are explored, the unique powers appear. When the unique powers are allowed to appear, infinity is gained. We each have one stick. Combine the sticks to make a forest. Combine the embers to make a sun.
Never write alone. If writing makes us feel alone, then we’re doing it wrong. When life forces us into isolation, we must fight the isolation. Sometimes we have no choice. Sometimes we are unlucky, but we should never rely on luck anyway. This is our chance to become creators. Never rely on what we have, only what we can give.
We must never teach ourselves to fear. We must teach each other to love. Love must be smart and fearless. Hold love like light in the hand, enter dark isolation, then light it.
Part 3: We Fight Together
Top priority for every good storyteller: Characters.
Make characters the top priority, always. Storytellers need to know the value of characters in the fight against loneliness. Characters fight loneliness with us.
Rule #1: Not Alone. A storyteller is not alone when the characters are there. The world is a cold place, and we are in constant danger of freezing. If we stand out in the cold long enough, we will die. Being alone is being cold. Stories and characters are everything to us. We do not care about prose, or fancy writing styles, or clever words, or plot, or witty narration. When I think back on stories I love, I only think about characters I love. We remember nothing except for the characters and how they made us feel. Good characters include Harry Potter, Molly Millions, and Abraham Lincoln. These are what we think about when we think about stories. Characters. We’re not alone when characters are in our heads.
Don’t believe that bad things last forever. Aloneness does not last forever. Even in death, loneliness is never permanent. Even for people who are imprisoned their entire lives. Even for people who have never seen the sky, loneliness is never eternal. Never stop searching for heaven.
Go to war with loneliness every day. Use these weapons:
High-Quality Friends (if any are available)
A meaningful job.
Books
Manga
Graphic Novels
Anime
Movies
99% of Television is stupid, but 1% is good.
Music, to a limited degree.
Find what helps. Good stories melt our loneliness away. The mind wants to hold onto good things. Every part of us wants to fight for what’s right, and anything that fuels us for the fight makes us feel good in an unusually healthy way. We want to care, and we love things that increase our caring. Live a good story. Find which stories are worthy of immersion. Use that knowledge to find good life choices.
Ever felt like an ant? Ever crawled up a wall in search of sugar or gone to war for a queen? Ants will do anything for the colony. Ants will throw themselves into any danger for the greater good. Ants are not afraid of death, because they, through thoughtless instinct, know what their contributions mean. Ants are motivated. Ants will (usually) protect their children at any cost. Ants will drown for their greater good, get eaten for their greater good, die for their greater good. Ants only need to be put in the right direction, and then they will build an empire. Ants feel uncontrollable impulses to do what they think is right. Ants wish they knew how to save the world, but instead of being saddened by their lack of power, they use their little strength to do everything they can possibly do, and this lets them walk the line between anger and sadness. Protecting babies, building homes, beating evil empires.
When we inspire each other to save the world, we are like ants touching our antennae together, communicating a common need that we understand instinctually. Show them in the simplest terms what they can do about it. No ant believes that apathy and selfishness are good. Humans are the same. None of us wants to be seen as apathetic, because it is always a sign of weakness, and none of us can tolerate the feeling of being weak. Ants understand the value and frailty of life, and they fight as hard as they can every day. Ants get in groups to save their world, and it’s working for them. If it’s working for stupid brainless ants, then imagine how well it can work for us.
Never stop fighting. Loneliness did not always exist, and it will not exist forever, but we’re stuck with it until forever comes. No matter how strong we are, none of us can hope to defeat “The Alone”. We can kill it, but we can’t end it since it respawns every day. We have to fight it, and fight it, and keep fighting it. The goal is to never stop fighting. We must win 1000 battles to live our entire lives. We are at a disadvantage, because even one loss can rip away our will to live, but loneliness itself can endure thousands of losses. We resort to dirty tactics, by tricking our minds into being happy through stories, and this is our method for repeatedly killing loneliness. Winning is never pretty because a battle is a battle, but winning is winning, and winning is good. We must defeat “Loneliness” every day. We never come out of loneliness unscathed. We always get hurt, and then we have to heal.
The fight against loneliness is ugly. The only goal is to come out of loneliness at all, to go through it but not get eaten. We call it “pulling through.” “Dragging yourself.” “Pulling yourself.” “Escape.” We never call it “a walk in the park.” Surviving is ugly. Surviving is hideous. Surviving the human world is like winning a fireworks-juggling competition. No one ever “wins” a fireworks-juggling competition. Everyone gets hurt. Life is stupid. Life is dangerous. Life is stupidly dangerous. We must live dangerously, but we can’t live stupidly. Living dangerously means fighting the challenges. Living stupidly means rejecting the challenges. Living alone, when we have to, for a good cause, is good. Living alone, out of fear, without real need, is too sad.
Fight Loneliness. Storytellers are highly susceptible to loneliness. It is a work hazard. We need to give ourselves a reason to survive. Survival is a fight. Nature tells us to fight. Storytellers mainly fight the inner war inside of us all, instead of fighting other humans. The enemy is inside, not outside. We always fight ourselves more than we fight each other. A famous author named George Orwell fought fascists in Spain in the 1930s. Then he got shot in the neck but survived. He would agree that the inner war is the only real war, since all wars come out of the inner war. To live, we must actively FIGHT against loneliness. Loneliness is a lethal force, and we have to be more lethal than it. Every day, aloneness kills many of us. None of us are immune. None of us are safe. We are all soldiers in the war against being alone.
I’m writing this Storyteller’s Survival Guide because I am tired of seeing the massive casualties. We don’t talk about loneliness enough. It’s a quiet little hell. The Garden of Beasts is a very quiet place, until you fight the beasts. A “bedroom” can turn into an isolation chamber within seconds. Then it can turn into a tomb just as quickly. To storytellers, these are the dangers of loneliness: Loneliness makes it hard to get in touch with characters. We have to swing it around on its head and turn it into a motivating force. Loneliness degrades our brain cells and neural connections. Our brains start to die! We have to swing it around on its head and turn it into a connective force. We have to turn misfortune into fortune. Storytellers use the magic of love to transform loneliness into stories against loneliness. We’re magical, but suicide kills thousands of storytellers every day. Loneliness is only one of the many beasts in the Garden of Beasts. Loneliness fights dirty, and so must we. Loneliness is a filthy, dirty fighter who will always aim for our scars first and our insecurities second, then our genitals third, because it has no honor and no shame. Never feel bad about killing loneliness through good stories. Loneliness always deserves to die.
Togetherness is real; Loneliness isn’t. Togetherness is not an illusion; Loneliness is an illusion. Here’s a stupid quote: "We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." ~ Orson Welles. Orson Welles was wrong when he used the term “illusion”. We are not creating illusions. We are changing reality. Storytellers are not magicians. We don’t make things disappear and reappear. We are gods. We make reality. Orson Welles was right when he said “only through love and friendship blah blah blah.” Sometimes we live by ourselves, and it hurts. Sometimes we live alone for a long time. Sometimes we die before we can ever cure our loneliness. But only through love and friendship does anything good happen. At least this Orson guy knew that loneliness is dangerous. We must find the cure for loneliness every day we live. We are creating the cure. Life imitates art. Better art means better life. Eventually, we will find a permanent cure for this ugly lonely feeling, and it won’t be a creepy fake cure but a real one. We will eventually fix every problem. Until then, we fight. But this lesson will still be the most important lesson for every living being even in the most distant future, because even once we have the cure, we will still need to know why the cure exists and what would happen to us without it. What would happen to our stories? They would die, that’s what.
When it’s hopeless, keep pushing. Laugh insanely and fight a meaningless fight, but never do nothing. Hopelessness does not lack logic, but it lacks the knowledge to complete logic. Survival seems impossible. The keyword is “seems.” But since when is anything what it seems? Humans know nothing but see everything, which means nothing is ever what it seems. Laugh at despair, reject sorrow like an exploding sun rejects darkness, and when it seems like we can’t stop little boys and little girls from dying, keep fighting like crazy, like an ant. Be like the ant as it fights to its last breath. No matter how much we scream at the ant, and no matter how many sad and hopeless stories we show it, the ant never loses its objective.
Love. Love is the only way to survive. We all need to love and be loved. We have more need to love than to be loved. We need to send love out more than we need to take it in. Every lonely storyteller knows deep down that we are more capable of emitting love than absorbing it. Waiting for love to happen to us is not as useful for our survival as taking the initiative and expressing our care for others. Love is the only thing we can give endlessly. We take in more water than we put out. We take in more food than we put out. We take in more air than we put out. But even if we are empty, we can still love nonstop. None of us are satisfied by loving ourselves. We need to love others. We want to fill everything, not only ourselves. This is not sexual love. This is not romantic love. This is a love that makes us wish we could witness every story, as if to make sure that everything is complete, with or without us. It doesn’t have to be super deep love. It only needs to be enough. Good teachers show us how to keep giving even when we’re empty. The hopeless will say that constant love is crazy, but real love is never an illusion, and hopelessness is always an illusion.
Our world is held together by the shreds of love that survive all this insanity. Pay attention when love shows itself. Study and consider every kind of love. Here are some examples:
A nurse who loves her patients enough to keep them alive, even the ones who annoy her.
A philanthropist who loves humanity enough to work hard for other lives, even though a part of the motivation is getting paid.
A friend who loves a friend enough to give them honest opinions.
A teacher who loves her students and sees their potential, even though they are the most privileged, spoiled, useless little idiots the world has ever known.
Absence of love is absence of the probability of survival. If we give it, we might get it in return. In a cruel world where nothing is promised, we must choose to send love into the deepest abyss. None of us can do anything alone. None of us are truly alone. Clash with loneliness. Never give loneliness what it wants without a fight. When loneliness throws us down, let’s get our friends to help us beat it up. Since loneliness is the biggest monster and dirtiest fighter in all the universes, no one will say it’s shameful to ask for help killing it. The monster’s secret, all evil’s secret, is that it wants to die because it feels alone.
Review
This lesson in one sentence: Loneliness is the deadliest danger to us, so let’s defeat it with love!
Loneliness is never permanent.
“Alone” is always temporary, even after we die.
Survive.
Next Lesson:
How to Find Meaning
Media
~ Quotes ~
Look at all the happy creatures dancin’ on the lawn. Bother me tomorrow, today I’ll buy no sorrows. Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door. (Upbeat music continues)
~ Creedence Clearwater Revival
Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
~ Albert Einstein (disputed)
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.
~ Carl Jung
Home is not where you were born. Home is where all your attempts to escape cease.
~ Naguib Mahfouz
The lonelier you are, the more you pull away, until humans seem an alien race, with customs and a language you can't begin to understand.
~ Alice Hoffman
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.
~ Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954).
Yes, but that’s a good thing. You make it sound like it’s a bad thing. Why? It’s a good thing that we don’t morph into one big disgusting mass of flesh. It’s good that we aren’t all in the same brain, otherwise we’d all be the same. Diversity is a source of beauty. Total sameness is ugly. We can’t share experiences directly. Everyone gets their own version of the same thing. But don’t feel bad about it.
You see a society of island universes, but I see a never-ending supply of beachy island getaways with warm sand, fruit, and infinite possibilities to dance together and show how we feel. Google says π is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14159… We can calculate it endlessly but never arrive at an exact number when working with matter. That’s fine. We can get very close. We can get close enough to each other to understand each other almost exactly, or “well enough”, but there is no need to merge together, since that would be nasty. Imagine merging with your daughter into a single being. Disgusting. Embrace the diversity of life. It’s the path to never being lonely again.
Did you know that The Doors almost named their band “The Doors of Perception”? Thanks, Aldous.
You know that it would be untrue! You know that I would be a liar! If I was to say to you, Girl we couldn’t get much higher. Come on baby light my fire!
~ Daniel Norther
They're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinking alone.
~ Billy Joel, "Piano Man", Piano Man (1973).
I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.
~ John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, (1937)
Never does the soul feel so far from human life as when a man finds himself alone in the vistas of the moon, either in the streets of a sleeping city, the avenues of the woods, or by the border of the sea. Earth, swayed perhaps by her powerful satellite, withdraws her sympathy from him, and he wanders in a white void, wondering if he was born to be thus annulled.
~ Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, Two Men (New York: Bunce and Huntington, 1865)
He wonders. We all wonder. We all wonder this together.
~ Daniel Norther
We suffer a lot in our society from loneliness. So much of our life is an attempt to not be lonely: 'Let's talk to each other; let's do things together so we won't be lonely.' And yet inevitably, we are really alone in these human forms. We can pretend; we can entertain each other; but that's about the best we can do. When it comes to the actual experience of life, we're very much alone; and to expect anyone else to take away our loneliness is asking too much.
~ American Buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho
That is absolute bullshit. And deep down, you know it.
~ Daniel Norther
The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced the ultimate, and it has let you down.
~ Ravi Zacharias
If you think that’s true, then you haven’t experienced the ultimate.
You know that it would be untrue! You know that I would be a liar! If I was to say to you, Girl we couldn’t get much higher. Come on baby light my fire!
~ Daniel Norther, singing badly at the top of his lungs
When I was about 18 years old, the first time I heard Eminem’s song “Shake That” I thought it said, “Shake that ass with me”.
I thought to myself, ‘Why is Eminem telling a woman to shake her ass WITH him?’ But then I thought, ‘Oh, he’s being inclusive and wants to make fun of the situation. Sarcasm at its finest! Women should be treated with respect and men should show solidarity to women by shaking their butts together. We should do more things together and feel less alone. What man doesn’t like to shake his ass every now and then?’
Years later, I read the real lyrics, and I was very disappointed.
~ Daniel Norther
Credits
Scary lonely mist picture from this person: https://pixabay.com/users/stocksnap-894430/
Sad teddy bear girl picture from this person: https://pixabay.com/users/greyerbaby-2323/
Mountain climb picture from this person: https://pixabay.com/users/gab5540-1194994/