Heart on the sleeve: Technology induced loneliness and the difficulty in finding love.

The ancient and the modern times are replete with inventions of every kind, from Penicillin to the selfie stick, mankind has seen the evolution of it all. The main reason behind all these inventions was singular: the relevant pain points were identified. Be it the need to find a cure for a disease/condition to the need for a proper and ‘gramworthy’ picture, all the pain points are relevant for the relevant ages. One such invention is technology and social media. While it is a boon according to many, it is also a bane for the same reason that anything that is capable of making people happy also wields the power to make them unbelievably sad.

 

What can people not find at the click of a button? Culinary appliances to a date to even casual relationships. Man is now getting more impatient by the day because of the notions that everything can be available in a jiffy and everyone is replaceable. These are anomalous times because everyone feels that they deserve the best of things, the best of people to be with and the best out of life, very few are willing to actually take the effort to be that person who deserves all these things.

 

In statistics and so in life many things are governed by cause-and-effect relationships. If a person were to believe that they can be detached from everyone, they will invariably end up ditching a lot of people out of fear of vulnerability and end up alone and detached, which would be a manifestation of that belief showing itself in a cause-and-effect relationship. The availability of another uninterested human being which would possibly save a person from commitment, truth and vulnerability at that moment, more often than not ends up making them lonelier than they were and thereby making them run farther away from commitment.

 

Earlier, midlife crisis and existential crisis were mostly linked to married couples in their 30s. Interestingly, now it is often linked to youngsters in their 20s who are overworked, stressed and needless to say, connected with everyone virtually, but most of them not even connected to themselves spiritually. It is for this exact reason that many have started to solicit the wisdom of the ancients by doing Yog, doing some soul-searching and understanding who they are and coming to terms with it, accepting it and finally letting go of the attributes that no longer serve them.

 

The total disconnect with oneself and the need for constant amusement pushes man to connect himself with the other person and what is essentially supposed to be a meaningful relationship between two souls ends up being a travesty of somewhat soul stirring conversations that ended up being a simulacrum of what should have and could have been. Today’s generation is the ‘almost generation’ where everything seems to be on the cusp of something and ends up being nothing.

 

They say, the only way out is through. Only when one goes through a plethora of experiences, can one navigate how to survive these feelings. The best one, of course is travelling as much as one can, as often as one can and as far as one can. Exposure to diverse cultures can broaden perspective. A routine social media detox can work wonders, as well. Social media makes people compare their journey with that of someone else’s and likens the understanding of individual karma and individual journeys with that of a competition.

 

The only thing we can swear by in these technology induced lonely times is that only when we have found peace within ourselves, can we love someone else and be kind to them. A good way to find that is to learn to and be comfortable spending time alone and to understand the difference between loneliness and solitude. 

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Author: Ms. Radhika Sunil Vaidya. 

E-mail i.d:   radhika.vaidya98@gmail.com

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