A Question I Can’t Shake

 I have been thinking about loneliness lately. Not in a dramatic way. More like the quiet kind that sneaks in between appointments. The kind that shows up even when your calendar is full.

I wonder if you have noticed it too.

We live in a strange moment in history. So many of us work from home now. We order groceries without speaking to a human. We text instead of knocking. We scroll instead of lingering. Our lives are efficient. But not always connected.

We tell ourselves we are in touch because we see each other’s lives online. We know who got engaged. Who had a baby? Who went on vacation? We double-tap and leave heart emojis and call it checking in. But knowing about someone is not the same as being with someone.

Community used to be something you stumbled into. Now it is something you schedule. And loneliness has a way of slipping through the cracks.

I think about the single thirty-something who goes to weddings more than dinner parties. The teenager who feels invisible in a hallway full of people. The newly divorced person who no longer knows where they belong. The person in recovery is surrounded by others, but only in rooms where everyone is hurting. The senior whose world keeps getting smaller as friends disappear and winters feel longer.

Different lives. Same ache.

Loneliness does not always look lonely. Sometimes it looks busy. Sometimes it looks successful. Sometimes it looks like someone who always shows up for others but never feels truly seen themselves.

And I wonder what loneliness does to our souls.

I wonder how it shapes the stories we tell ourselves. How it makes us doubt our worth. How it convinces us that everyone else has figured out belonging except us.

Here is where my curiosity has been wandering.

I have been reading about communities experimenting with something beautifully simple. Not programs. Not therapy. Not fixing anyone.

Just rooms. Chairs. Coffee. Open doors.

Spaces where you can sit without explaining why you came. Where no one asks what you do for a living. Where silence is allowed. Where laughter is welcome. Where being a bit of a mess is not disqualifying.

Some folks in the UK have even given this a name. They talk about being camerados. Something like friends, but softer. People halfway between strangers and companions.

I do not know. That phrase feels like a blessing in a world obsessed with categories. Not best friends. Not networking contacts. Just fellow humans.

It makes me wonder what might happen if we practiced being neighbours again. If we made room for accidental friendships. If we created spaces where no one has to earn their seat.

I am curious, what would help people feel a little less alone?

Not theoretically. Not globally. Right here. In our lives. In our neighbourhoods.

Maybe the answers are already among us. In the stories you carry. In the longings you have not yet named aloud.

So I will leave it there. Not with a solution. Just with curiosity.

What if the holiest thing we can offer each other is simply a place to sit and someone glad we came?