Loneliness and Isolation
During the pandemic, the topics of loneliness and isolation came up in many of the Zoom conversations I had with children.
The six-minute film “Baboon on the Moon” is about a baboon who lives alone on the Moon. Wordless and moving, the video portrays the baboon as full of longing for the Earth, struggling with feelings of sadness and loneliness. The video raises questions such as:
Is there a difference between being alone and being lonely?
Is loneliness always negative?
When we feel lonely, do we always also feel sad?
Do we appreciate things more when we cannot have them?
What makes a place a home?
In one conversation, after watching the video a group of nine-year-old children discussed how much more they appreciate both their friends and the opportunity to attend school than they had before the pandemic. One child talked about how much he had often dreaded going to school, but now that school was online he realized that there were many things about physically being in school that he really valued and missed.
We explored the ways that solitude can feel differently when it is chosen rather than involuntary. “I like to be alone, but it’s different when you have to be alone,” said one child. But we also talked about how forced solitude might eventually foster a new appreciation for being alone, especially once the pandemic is behind us and our ordinary social lives resume. Will we have a greater capacity for solitude once it is no longer compulsory?
Psychologist Sherry Turtle contends that solitude is necessary to develop genuine relationships with other people. She writes, “Solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments.” If this is true, might we be able to cultivate even deeper attachments and connections post-pandemic?
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