Sunday, May 13, 2007

Loneliness

"The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved." — Mother Teresa (1910-1998)
*Photo by "Picasso"


"They're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinking alone. "

Billy Joel, "Piano Man", Piano Man (1973)



"Loneliness is an emotional state in which a person experiences a powerful feeling of emptiness and isolation. Loneliness is more than just the feeling of wanting company or wanting to do something with another person. Loneliness is a feeling of being cut off, disconnected and alienated from other people. The lonely person may find it difficult or even impossible to have any form of meaningful human contact. Lonely people often experience a subjective sense of inner emptiness or hollowness, with feelings of separation or isolation from the world."

in Wikipedia



Loneliness
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.

It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed-

that is when loneliness receives the rivers...


Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke