I just feel so alone and isolated in the Western city I live in. The reason I make the distinction between east vs west is that I travel frequently to Asia and I just love how they make such a big deal of things that should be communal, such as cooking together and eating.
In my country, families might eat together once or twice per week, but the food is never really cooked with care because of the pressure that people are under working the 9-5 jive. The cooking should be as big a deal as the eating of the food, and an interactive event involving family/friends. While Asia isn't some sort of idyllic utopia, it is definitely a more important aspect of peoples' lives to create tasty food together, take time doing it, and enjoy it as friends or family together.
Isolating technologies such as the Internet and video games, while really great innovations, I feel are driving huge declines in social interaction both between adults, and more worryingly, between children. To return to Asia again, it is common to see the same group of friends meeting each other every single day in Thailand to play soccer together as the sun goes down. This is independent of age; I've seen separate groups of teens and groups of fortysomethings turn up to the same place at the same time every day to share this bonding time with friends.
This is the type of communal bonding that is necessary I feel to the human condition but it is being eroded by individualism. People seem to be content with coming home from the office and vegetating in front of the sofa for the evening instead of meeting with friends. Or even if people actively go outside and do things, there's a lot of focus on individual stuff, such as going to the gym with headphones in and ignoring everybody, or going to a yoga class at which people might utter one or two words, do the class, and leave. It's kinda sad.
I feel like the meaning of life should arise from our interactions with other people, especially those closest to us. Laughing together, sharing jokes, building shelter, cooking food, playing games, hiking, creating things, etc. These are things that were once the norm but have become the exception in my opinion.
To provide balance, perhaps it's the case that I just haven't found my people yet. But if my people are out there I don't know where the fuck they are and at 28 I don't see much chance in finding them. It's like people acquire their material possessions and think, "fuck it, I don't need you except when I feel reeeeeally alone, at which point we'll go get drunk in a bar until the next time I feel like I'm going insane due to lack of bonding with friends".
I just feel so lost and alone in this world. I don't want to blame western civilization on everything but I think it has a huge part to play in the loneliness epidemic that is currently wreaking havoc on people in western countries, including me. I just wish life was simpler in this regard. I wish I could find a place where community is everything, but I don't think I'll ever find that when even my fucking neighbors barely utter a hello when I pass by them.
Submitted October 15, 2018 at 02:00PM by PhraPikanet https://ift.tt/2AaZVD5
