by Bonnie McCune

Sometimes I imagine my reality, the one I live in day to day, is that I am truly all alone. The people, the world, the politics, the struggles are hallucinations. My life would be so much easier and less painful if that were so.

No, that’s a cop-out. An attempt to explain the inexplicable.

People these days often feel this way. Experts counsel us that loneliness is pervasive, with approximately half of U.S. adults experiencing loneliness. Because I’m the mature age I am, quite definitely in the “older” category, and because I’ve been researching housing for the aging, I easily can envision the result –millions of old people stuck away in rooms the size of individual crates to bear the end of their lives alone. A friend of mine, without children or partner, isolated in a large, three-story, stone house, says her most pressing human need is for companionship. People to talk to, bounce ideas off, have fun with.

While I’m not in her precise position, I can with no effort imagine it. The results? I’m learning not to be quite so snarky in my conversational forays, not to be as stand-offish in casual chats at the grocery store or in line at the movies. Faster to send emails to old acquaintances.

Changes in our American life styles make a difference. We used to have friendly little coffee shops where we could meet congenial passersby. Now in those locations, we’re all hemmed in with laptops, cell phones and tablets, often populated with AIs complete with their own personalities and quirks. Who needs humans? Yet we still desire them. Read more »