Lonely

Well worry not, this post will be quite different from the last one. Quite. But for an update, that guy did finally break up with his boyfriend. He is going through a hard time because of it, but it was necessary. But I am beginning to wonder if he is indeed as great a person as I once thought. I had thought him both hot and nice and cute and outgoing, but lately I have begun to wonder if he isn't rather flakey and inconsiderate of others. But I have washed my hands of the whole situation so no more on that. Now on to the real topic of the day.
There is a scene at the end of the movie Contact where Jodie Foster is testifying before Congress about the experience she has just had. She cannot prove what happened, but she knows that it did. That it was real. In describing the experience she says it was a vision of the universe that says we are not, that none of us is alone. There is more to the statement, but that particular part always resonates with me. I am not ashamed to say that I pretty much always cry at that movie. That's why I bought it. Any movie that can make me cry belongs in my collection. Another movie that can do that is Meet Joe Black. I love that movie for various reasons, but there is a character, a Jamiacan woman, who asks death why he came to earth. His answer is that he was lonely. She responds by saying, roughly "Don't fool yourself mister. We mostly lonely here too. If we are lucky, we have lots of pictures to take with us when we go." Both of these scenes have one major theme in common. The lonliness of humankind. Which made me wonder, are we all lonely?
No doubt we have all felt lonely before. But there is a superficial level of lonliness, where you are alone and are bored. This can easily be solved often by picking up the phone and calling a friend or family member. But is there is a deeper lonliness? I think there is. I say this because I feel it. Something that is more than just not having anyone sitting next to you talking to you. But something at a far deeper level. A lonliness that results from not having anyone know every shred of your thoughts and being and existence. We cannot read each others minds or see through each other's eyes. And so we are each an individual creature, capable of understanding what people feel, but only because we too feel it. We cannot actually feel it in the manner they do, or truly understand.
Love is the closest thing we have to two people being one. I will admit that my own lonliness may result from not having a significant other who I can share everything with, and who I trust completely. I am actually not a very trusting person when it comes to relationships, so that is a challenge for someone. But I wonder if even love has the ability to fully cure true lonliness. There will always be things we don't know about each other, even after spending decades together. This is unfortunately a question that I do not have the ability to answer. I believe there is a deeper lonliness. One that results from not being able to bare your soul completely. Is love the cure? Or something to make the symptoms less until that ultimate cure, death. I take some solace in that scene in Meet Joe Black. Because when she says her line, I realize that I am not the only one who feels lonely in this world. There is some solace in the idea that you are not the only one. That it is not because you lack the social skills (read: I am shy) to make friends or because people don't like you. It is because all of us are this way. But that is just a movie. I wonder if there are real live people out there willing to admit they are lonely outside of a therapists office. Well I just did. Who will join me?