Uniqueness and Loneliness
You’re special. You’re one of a kind. You’re truly unique.
You march to the beat of your own drummer. You take the path less traveled. You don’t care what others say or think of you.
We’ve all heard these words before, and many of us may truly believe them and act accordingly. Yet, if we start to think more deeply on this subject, it becomes apparent that living a life like this leads us to a very lonely place.
I begin with the premise that nearly all humans crave understanding. Humans want to share their subjective experiences and emotions with other humans, and have that person or persons echo back their feelings. If we hear a funny joke, one of our first instincts may be to tell someone else the joke so that they will also laugh. Laughing with another person makes that joke carry more meaning than laughing alone. Research has shown that we laugh harder and have more positive effects from our laughter when we laugh with other people. This phenomenon extends to other experiences as well. How much joy do you get when dining alone? How about going to an amusement park by yourself. Life experienced with another person is richer, more comforting, and more enjoyable than life lived alone, no matter how introverted the person may be.
We are all familiar with what happens when we can’t share our life with someone else: loneliness. This feeling creeps up on us, smothering us like a black blanket from outside our view. It reminds us that we have a craving for human connection and understanding that needs to be satisfied. Spending too much time in isolation, and experiencing life by ourselves is a recipe for loneliness, depression, and potential suicidality.
Beyond loneliness, suffering is more manageable when it is shared with another person. Telling someone of your struggles and your grief helps to lighten the burden. It is comforting to have another person hear your story, acknowledge it, reflect empathy, provide sympathy, and offer to help if needed. These benefits are all the greater if the person truly understands your struggle, and even has undergone it himself. Then, you don’t feel alone. You feel like you have a companion, a comrade, someone who has literally walked a mile in your shoes.
The real dilemma arises when you are a truly unique person. If you act differently than everyone else, do things that nobody else does, have different experiences and life struggles, then when you reach out for genuine understanding and sympathy, you will end up empty-handed. The people listening will try to understand, but they don’t truly understand you. They might pay you lip-service, but the effect is largely a shadow of real empathy and sympathy. In the midst of your struggles, your uniqueness increases the distance between you and other people. Your special status makes you difficult to understand. Your rare actions may even make you confusing and potentially scary to some. None of these traits help you to gain comfort. None of these traits do anything to diminish your loneliness.
Thus, we are left with a catch-22. Uniqueness, special status, rarity: they make an extraordinary person, who may continue onto a very successful career or leave an impressive legacy behind. But along this journey, this special person will likely endure unbelievable loneliness, isolation, and feelings of estrangement. It’s truly a blessing and a curse, and something to keep in mind when we strive to be so unbelievably unique, without any thought to the downside of that path.
There is no grand conclusion or recommendation here, just a casual observation. Uniqueness and being special create the conditions for loneliness and despair. Be careful with how unique you strive to be, for regardless of your outward or inward focus, we all crave human interaction and understanding - it’s part of what makes us human.
