Are You Lonely? Pt. II
When introversion becomes an excuse for hiding, from yourself.
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”
― Aristotle
I ended last week’s essay on the empty promise of technology as a cure for loneliness (I recommend you read it first). “Part of the screen’s allure is that it facilitates a dangerously pleasurable self-forgetfulness,” says Olivia Laing in The Lonely City. It’s this very self-forgetfulness that happens when we spend too much time in our own private worlds. I only realize this now that I’m living with roommates for the first time in six years. Being around other people, I become self-aware; having a face-to-face conversation makes me conscious of what I say and how I look; I’m now defined in relation to another body moving in space.