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Existential Loneliness

By Aleksandra Djordjevich

Today, by pure chance, I spent a few seconds witnessing a couples therapy session. Facebook suggested it, and since we live in a voyeuristic society, boundaries no longer seem to exist, even though boundaries are all we ever hear about. In truth, there are no boundaries for cameras and exposure; what remains is exclusion through cancel culture.

Quite “accidentally,” a message from the therapist resonated deeply with my being: that the Other will never fully perceive us, that there are parts of ourselves which different people, to varying degrees, will or will not be able to see and accept. I felt sorry for the husband, whose eyes filled with tears as he reached across that invisible boundary toward his wife, trying to heal a painful wound. Until that moment, she had believed that his shortsightedness was responsible for her feeling of loneliness.

How many of us experience it every day? While doing laundry, reading a book, or traveling?

Sometimes I think I might manage to wash away that dreadful sense of despair if I immerse myself in a bath. Even if I fill my day with mechanical tasks that benefit my family, after I fold the last shirt, it is there again. But when I write, it disappears—or at least parts of it do. Let us say it is made of smoke, and I manage to blow some of it away and extinguish the fire, only for it to break out somewhere else. Then it becomes a different smoke, and yet somehow it is the same.

Are writers more prone to existential loneliness? Do they deserve it? Have they brought it upon themselves? Because they peer where they should not and turn things inside out? Are they simply more aware of their own smallness?

Or should we attribute it all to introversion? That would be an oversimplification, since not every introvert is a writer, just as not every writer is an introvert. Still, I feel there must be a common denominator, one that can be found in a constellation of traits and inclinations. And I believe that the constellation is most often present in artists.

“Mom, what hurts?” my children asked me yesterday.

“The world hurts all over my body.”

Sometimes I feel it in my pelvis, sometimes in my shoulders. Perhaps we women are simply accustomed to carrying things. Yet within that inner space, there is hardly anyone who can comfort me except myself. It is as though I move through dimensions where my husband embraces me, but when I return to my own corner, the presence of something stronger than tangible reality wraps around me like a scarf. I breathe with it.

At times, I think I could eliminate it through a diet, and I feel frustrated that others do not experience it as intensely as I do. Then I remember that this is the price of growing up. The moment we realized, in the “mirror stage,” that we are ourselves and cannot merge completely with our mother or with anyone else, we agreed to become what we had always been—writers, politicians, curmudgeons, or simply ordinary people with virtues and flaws.

Sensitive children felt rejection acutely whenever they failed to meet expectations. Those who were a little more resilient followed their own path regardless. And yet that strange feeling continues to flow between us.

It is not surprising that many “cultivators of silence” find satisfaction on Facebook. Personally, I have truly connected with many people in the virtual space. Is it because we are freed, at least physically, from the gaze of the Other? Or because it is a space in which we choose? That is a question for philosophers.

The algorithm brought them together until death do them part. Pardon me—until disagreement does.

Our bubbles appear resilient at first glance, but only because they are not sensitive to flattery, pandering, or the disparagement of outsiders. What we unfortunately failed to see in the mirror is that there is no person with whom we will agree one hundred percent, no person whose every contour aligns perfectly with our own.

If we were ever to believe that we had found such a person, I would ask: which parts of themselves are they abandoning, and which parts of myself am I abandoning, merely so that our bubble may float forever in some unreachable place?

How often do we still turn around in public transportation, strike up a conversation with a stranger, ask for directions?

“There is no need,” the modern spirit will say, “because we have Google Maps and artificial intelligence.”

Do we criticize ourselves when we trust them? And whom do we trust more—artificial intelligence, ourselves, or the Other?

What frightens me is the possibility that differences will be erased and that we will remain alone in a sad space filled with all sorts of devices, none of which truly sees us.

And then it will no longer matter that our conversation partner has a blind spot, because they are still observing us from countless different angles.

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