Americans report fewer close friends and confidants than they did years ago. For most people, their only close confidant is their spouse, and the most common number of confidants people report is 0.
I read this sad statistic while sitting in a restaurant late one night eating tabouleh by myself at a table for four. I was in fact enjoying my time alone, but the irony that immediately hit home with me was that my delicious solitude on display was unconventional, perhaps even uncomfortable to watch, at the same time that overtures of real friendship seem taboo.
I chatted briefly with a friend sitting nearby who is obviously on the prowl for one such person, a close confidant, preferably of the opposite sex. Such yearning for the closeness and tenderness of a fellow human being reminded me of bowerbirds. They build archways out of grass and blue trinkets to attract a mate. The archway is their way of saying, “There is an empty space waiting for you, my love.” Their emptiness is their lovesong!
The sadness of solitude seems to stem from the fact that we feel disconnected while simultaneously surrounded by a sea of people. We are like dieters longing for a bite of chocolate, which happens to be hovering just above our tongue, but though we can taste a bit of the sweetness, we cannot have it. There is nothing more torturous. Perhaps this is why we feel more lonely surrounded by people and less lonely in the desert.
Modern social conventions impose a wall between us, but those who violate it are not always scorned. I watch how my 3-year-old son interacts with strangers. He talks to them like he knows them as a friend, asking them what they’re doing and where they’re going. It’s not exactly the sort of socializing a mother wants to see, but there’s an openness there that adults don’t have, and the objects of his misdirected affections utterly delight in his attention.
Children with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder that leads to malformations in the brain, exhibit an uninhibited drive to affiliate with others. For them, “there are no strangers, only friends.” Though they cross boundaries with their social warmth, they often evoke equal warmth in others. Maybe everyone secretly has Williams syndrome, and we all just need to come out of the closet.
Of course, I think it’s just for want of more meaningful connections with someone, not everyone. Trying to glean some sort of human connection from my superficial interactions… it starts feeling a little ridiculous. But the key may lie in transforming the superficial small talk that we must rely on into something with underlying meaning, like a secret code… talking about the weather with the shared understanding that what you are really doing is using this vapid topic as a tool, a way of saying, “Hello there friend! I see you. I hear you. I care about you. You are not alone.” In this way, perhaps we can bring sincerity and warmth into conventional social interactions that are otherwise shallow and empty.
