We are living in times where we are more accessible than ever before. Mobile phones, the Internet, instant messaging, social media, YouTube, camera phones, the list goes on and is seemingly endless. So in an age where we have access to our friends, families, strangers, celebrities and so on at the touch of a button on a device that fits into the palm of our hand, how are there lonely people?
Many say that as humans, we crave love and connection at our core and that we spend our lives in search of it, a nurturing, validation, company and information and experiences that involve others. Where we have all of this in our hands at any time where ever we are, have we in fact become disconnected in our quest for connection?
As you read this right now, there are millions of people all over the world, chatting, video calling, talking via Skype and doing nothing but connecting with each other, but is it that actual presence, that physical interaction that we have replaced with the shall I say, over accessibility and connected world we live in that we are really missing?
I am at the beginning of Gen Y and often feel as if I would have been better off being born 30 years earlier with some of my old school opinions and grandpa in a nursing home type rants but I cant help it, it's who I am. I am a social commentator and am not afraid to say that my observations are more often than not, on point. I talk to many people every day and am a lover of a world problem solving conversation, and, of late, this topic of loneliness and disconnection in an age of connection has been coming up time and time again.
Many people I know are turning their backs on their online identities and are reverting back to actually leaving their homes to go and physically see and talk to other humans in the flesh, crazy right?
They're sick of newsfeeds, scrolling through feeds, receiving passive aggressive emails and texts and reading into the perceived tone of every message received and are taking their lives back into their own hands and are starting by turning off their devices, some even reverting to phones without the Internet. Yes, I believe there are still such things! These people have been there since the beginning of the tech boom and have watched it blossom into the word in which we live in, a world which is shaped by what we look at on our devices, our Internet browser windows, a world which can become quite small, quite withdrawn, repetitive and quite lonely.
So here we come to loneliness and disconnection in an age of connection. If I only search for particular things online, buy certain products and look at certain things on Instagram, my device and my Internet browser learns of this, and as a result, I see only these few things which I am interested in, which are only fads anyway. I lose the ability to look outside the box, which is the world, which I have built but essentially has been later shaped, modified, marketed and sold to me using bright colors and flashing text. Well played advertising, well played.
So it is with this life that fills up with material advertising, drinks being poured into jam jars being sipped on by people sitting on old pallets who are #grateful for the experience according to their newsfeeds, that I begin to think I am an alien looking in on a world I used to know and feel no longer apart of. I start to question if is me that is refusing to move with the times. So I then seek out others who are of the same opinion of me, and begin to reshape my own world without the Internet telling me to and it is I, seeking that love and connection of other humans that I can no longer get online.
Alas, I take comfort in knowing that I have a pool of people in my life who are of similar opinions to me and of the world as we know it today. So, in my quest for connection, my feeling of disconnection and my drive to change this, I have once again become connected in a way which feeds my soul, my spirit, my hunger for living. You won't see much about it on my Instagram, or twitter, but I promise you that it's happening.
I suppose the irony of it all is that I need this world to a degree to spread my message to the masses, as I am now, but I've always prided myself on being a walking contradiction so I suppose in this instance, being consistently inconsistent is warranted.
Until next time.
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