¿Am I alone or lonely?

A few years ago, my sister married a Colombian and moved to this country, where I live. My mother then found herself literally alone... At the beginning, I felt anxiety in her and maybe she was a little scared, but what she did was to use her bright and natural creativity, by creating systems that gave her a sense of security, for example, with a hairdresser, organized to call her daily...

Some may argue that loneliness has become an epidemic[1]. And if we think about it, about 30 years ago it was difficult to find someone who lived alone; nowadays, it's too easy.

Nothing against it; actually, I like to live alone - well, almost alone, since I live in a small community, but I have a separate space. OK, the issue here is not that; the theme is the growing loneliness.

We may not be able to prevent someone from being alone, but we can avoid the experience of loneliness, and the first thing, as my mother found out, is to connect with the community.

If you reflect for a moment, you will perceive that there is an invisible network that unites all the people around you, generating a beautiful network of protection and care; this is the community.

My first conscious experience of really being alone was in Santiago, Chile. I was new to that country and I still didn't feel being part of a community, something that was later generated. So when Christmas came and I had no one to share... I had never really given much value to this holiday, but that day, yes, I realized that I really wanted to be with other people. So I reflected a while, look inside me and used creativity, one of my specialties. I called some people who were in contact with the organization I was coordinating and we planned a lunch together. I was never a good cook, but that day everything went amazing; not only was the food delicious, about 7 or 8 people came and I experienced a real Christmas.

The other way to overcome that feeling of loneliness - and if it is an epidemic, it is likely to affect you soon - is to look inside, find your own specialties and make use of them.

We will not always have a community and the reasons are diverse, in such a complex society, but we will always have our own inner wealth. In making use of this treasure, we will naturally experience satisfaction and change our perspective not being lonely even though I am alone.

Then, we will deliver these specialties to the world and the world will return us company of some kind.

I don't know if it's the cure to loneliness, but this is my humble suggestion: connect more with your community and look inside yourself, finding specialties that you can give to the world.

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[1] Check these articles on lonelines as an epidemic in relation to:

Global Youth: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/10/1-in-3-young-adults-are-lonely-and-it-affects-their-mental-health/

United States: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/envy/201902/loneliness-new-epidemic-in-the-usa

From disempowerment to empowerment

I have been working on the topic of empowerment for many years, since I realized the importance of power in life: that’s what we have that comes from within and helps us to defeat obstacles, to reinvent ourselves and to attain success.

However, I have noticed that there has been a decrement in the awareness of power; I would dare to say we are reaching very high levels of global disempowerment. How to turn this around? I would like to explore three of the present paradigms that show disempowerment and how to change that:

• Aloneness and short-term relationships. People are either choosing to live by themselves or they have relationships that last very little time, creating a unique situation for the family-based societies, governments, the economy and many other levels.
• The deep dissatisfaction, from citizens to government officers. In the past, this was a common trace of a dictatorial government, but nowadays even very well consolidated democracies are facing this, which may be considered a worldwide movement.
• The fake media. Instead of a media that covers matters and subjects into their depth, the social network has opened the doors to all kind of information and news are often short and inaccurate, generating the chance for fake news and deepfakes.

Why does this indicate the growing disempowerment and how to reverse this trend?

First of all, the main reason people are alone is not that they don’t need others because they are so satisfied and fulfilled; reality is there is not enough strength to try and live with other people, by accommodating to others’ way of living. One way of solving it is to invest time in developing more assertiveness and dialogue techniques, which will help in creating new bridges between people.

That dissatisfaction also reaches the social level, which used to happen in non-democratic countries and people of democratic countries used to point and say well, that’s the result of dictatorship. By happening in a democracy, it shows people’s disempowerment as the big irony is that people are marching and protesting against people they themselves have put in that position... The empowerment in terms of citizenship comes from developing better criteria to use at time of election and to know more about the government and social structure, so learning ways of promoting change in a more effective way.

Last but not the least, information has always had a deep impact in our mindset and good powerful information helps us to feel more empowered. Let’s add to that truthful; if the news is not real, the effect tends to be the opposite, particularly when facts come out and the person realizes they believed in something false, losing self-confidence. On one hand, control the news that come to you and don’t believe in them just like that; on the other hand, prioritize more in relation to which information is relevant to you, and focus on that, leaving other pieces of data aside.