A Plague Of Loneliness: Finding Our Way Back To Each Other

A two-minute kind voice practice for connection and belonging.

Loneliness is not always a personal failing. It can also reflect a world in which people stare at screens, remain alone in their apartments, and live separated inside their own boxes.

This meditation uses two voices, with one offering each phrase and another repeating it. You can receive the words, repeat them silently, or say them aloud.

This call-and-response practice remembers that our bones know belonging. When we understand loneliness as both a personal feeling and part of a larger cultural tide, we do not have to take it as evidence that something is wrong with us. We can listen to its longing for connection, move against isolation, catch waves carrying us in another direction, and create currents of our own.

Inspired by Robert Putnam’s research on declining social capital, explored in the documentary Join or Die, and Francis Weller’s writing on our inherent longing to belong in The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

Transcript

My kind voice says. My kind voice says. There is a plague upon the land. There is a plague upon the land. A silence, A loneliness. A silence a loneliness where people stare at screens where people stare at screens and they stay alone in their own apartment and they stay alone in their own apartment my kind voice says My kind voice says, My bones no belonging. My bones, No belonging. That was natural in times past, Where the tribe would drum and sing together by the fire every night. So the loneliness I feel. So the loneliness I feel. And the disconnection in the world. And the disconnection in the world. It's a reflection of a problem. Is a reflection of a problem. So my kind voice says. So my kind voice says. I can do things to connect. I can do things to connect. I can say hi to the grocery store teller. I can say hi to the grocery store teller. I can join a meetup group. I could join a meetup group. But I'm bucking the tide. But I'm bucking the tide of a plague of loneliness, Of a plague of loneliness. That's a much wider problem. That's a much wider problem.