Loneliness (final draft):

“Suppose in one night all animals and humans, excluding you, vanish off of Earth. All

structures, buildings, markets, offices, and places that were once bustling with population, are

now completely empty and devoid of life. Likewise, the birds’ chirping, the dogs’ barking, and the

sounds of cars moving from one place to another are nowhere to be heard. Zoos that were once a

place of attraction, filled with interesting and beautiful creatures are silent and lifeless. The only

forms of life that are left are you, plants, and micro-organisms.” Ever since I wrote this free write

and my instructor suggested that I consider it for my essay, I have been thinking about it quite a

lot. I explored this theme very minimally and it felt like I was only scratching the surface.

Loneliness is something that I have experienced first-hand. In my case, it was more like being

isolated, but it still counts as loneliness, right? When people around you act like you do not exist,

or when you approach them and they try their best to ignore you. The kind of loneliness I imagined

in that free write was different. In the aforementioned imaginary scenario, the reader is forced to

live in a world that is lonely and devoid of intelligent life. In my case, I was very much living in a

world full of fellow intelligent humans, but I was still lonely. Both individuals are forced to be

lonely. One lives in a world with no intelligent life, the other is surrounded by life, but still lonely.

So similar yet, so different.

In an L&T session, we read a short story called “Fish is Fish”. When the frog returns to his

fish friend and describes the wonders of the world outside the pond they live in, the fish gets

desperate and wants to see for himself. He leaps out of the water on the grass, almost killing

himself. Probably, the fish was tired of being alone? Perhaps he thought he had a chance to make
friends in a different environment? While it may have other meanings, I couldn’t help but interpret

it this way.

In the session, we also read Italo Calvino’s “The Man Who Shouted Teresa”. At the end

of that story, it turns out that the man was shouting for no reason at all. His motives remain

unknown. Later in the session, our instructor shared with us a response ChatGPT gave him to his

question “How can you connect the dangers of AI with Italo Calvino’s “Teresa”?” ChatGPT raised

four points to show the connections between the two subjects. While three of them sounded like

ChatGPT was trying hard to have something to say other than “I don’t know.”, the first point came

off as reasonable:

“Just as the protagonist in "Teresa" creates a mannequin and convinces himself of its humanity,

AI systems are created by humans to mimic human thought, behavior, or even emotions.”

This hit me like a truck. “Imaginary friends!” I thought to myself. The man in the story could have

been so lonely that he created an imaginary woman in his mind. The image of a spouse or a friend

who will embrace him, enjoy his company, and hear what he has to say. When you are so lonely,

when there is no one to talk to, and when you have no one to be intimate with, there is none other

than yourself.

In a part of his “Letter from Birmingham Prison,” Martin Luther King describes the life of

the average black person at that time. The discrimination, the hatred, the exile, and the segregation

they faced. “...when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black

brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers

smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly

find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old

daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television,
and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children,

and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her

beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people”

says Martin Luther King in his letter. The examples he provides are not hypothetical, these were

what the black people endured and had to live with in those dark times. What happens when you

not only isolate and distance yourself from an entire demographic of your nation but also actively

engage in harming them as much as you can? Isn’t this subjecting people to a form of loneliness?

You (a black person) are surrounded by other people (your fellow black brethren), but you feel

alone because you are separated from other people. From those who are different from you. What

is horrific is that the ones who subject you to such loneliness don’t want you to be among them,

they don’t want to be seen with you, and they don’t see you as their equal.

We also read a short story called “Girl”. In this story, a girl is receiving instructions. Walk

like this, talk like that, do this, and do that. “...on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the

slut you are so bent on becoming;” “...this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming

down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming;”

“...and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming;”

Reading the text and getting to these parts was heartbreaking. The instructions are unnecessarily

brash and disrespectful. In the session, our professor shared his idea about this text. He thought

that the instructing voice could be the girl’s thoughts. She is thinking to herself and telling herself

such things. Both views are plausible. An instructor, most likely a mother or an older sister, who

wants to advise her daughter or sister to be in line with societal norms; otherwise, the girl will be

seen as a prostitute. Maybe it is the girl herself thinking about how the world would view her if

she does not align herself to specific expectations and attitudes. It is not hard to imagine a girl who
lives so strictly to be lonely. When you live life on your own terms, you can experiment. You can

try to mingle and make friends with different types of people. Sure, it is not guaranteed to work

and is probably risky too. But a chance not taken is a chance that is lost. It feels like the girl is

lonely because of such restrictions.

Here I am at the end of the L&T class and I have learned so much from this essay alone.

What started with me thinking that loneliness is simply being somewhere without the presence of

anyone or anything else, grew into a more analytical look at how different loneliness can be

depending on the circumstances. Loneliness is being alone, loneliness is isolation, loneliness is

abandonment, and loneliness is limiting human freedom.

Afterword:

The reason why I chose ‘Loneliness’ as the topic of my essay is because I found it very intriguing.

My free write, which loneliness is a core aspect of, also left me asking many questions. It was an

activity I had no prior experience of, so I felt very proud to write a decent set-up for a bigger story

in my first attempt. I wrote this draft like I wrote my free writes. With the differences being the

edits and fixing grammatical mistakes. I am sure there are still some grammatical errors here and

there but for what it is, I am proud of it.

The stories I read during our sessions made me reflect upon loneliness. Sure, during the sessions

I wasn’t thinking about them the way I reflected upon them in this essay, but re-reading these

stories again with the purpose of finding connections to loneliness made me see things I did not

notice in my first time reading them. Loneliness is not necessarily being alone with no one around.

One can be extremely lonely in a world full of life. Exile, isolation, segregation, separation, and

restriction. These can also be classified as or be the causes of loneliness. They can be imposed on
people, or people can subject themselves to them. In the end, I can say my perspective on the topic

is now slightly broadened and I hope this piece provided something of value to you as well.