I am Puzzled About Isolation

 I recently had a friend that told me that they feel too lonely and dependent on their friends. As someone who usually has some type of suggestion when complaints are made, I felt quite useless at that moment. I didn’t know what to say because they seem to always be surrounded by friends and always at the center of attention.

At this point, I became puzzled. How could someone who is so socially active (at least from the outside) feel lonely? There, I realized that loneliness isn't a lack of interactions from other people, it’s about the desired social connections they lack. Sometimes, the desire to be understood is the biggest desire one could want: a feeling that you are not alone.

That story reminded me of Dvořák, especially his “American” string quartet and his “New World” symphony. When he composed these two pieces, he was living in the United States, which was far from his home in Europe. To everyone else, he was praised, admired, constantly surrounded by students and fellow musicians. Under all of that though, he was homesick and lonely. In his letters to home, Dvořák wrote a lot about missing the “simple things” back at home, things America could never fill. His American quartet and New World symphony show that. It’s the sound of someone trying to fit in with somewhere that doesn’t really understand him. That is really similar to what my friend described. To everyone else, they look surrounded, but inside, something feels off. That same non-noticable loneliness runs through the first chapters of The Great Gatsby as well. Nick, Daisy, and even Tom live surrounded by people and noise, yet all of them seem disconnected. 

Maybe that’s what loneliness really is: not the absence of company, but the absence of resonance — that missing note that reminds us who we are and where we belong. Dvořák turned that feeling into music. The rest of us try, in our own ways, to turn it into understanding.