Why is it that we do not join the lonely eater in the dining hall but look for those we know so well?

—Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

One of my very favorite songs is a rather obscure Beatles song called Things We Said Today. It is a dark and brooding, quite out of place at a time when the Beatles albums were still almost entirely saccharine teenage love songs.

It tells the story of a couple who are constantly too busy to make dedicated, quality time for each other. In a moment of clarity, the narrator realizes that one day he will look upon the mundane, everyday conversations the two shared as the priceless moments they really were.

Someday when I’m lonely,

Wishing you weren’t so far away,

Then I will remember

Things we said today

Things We Said Today

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in … but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“The greatest men are the most alone.”

—Charles Bukowski

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.”

—Douglas Coupland

There’s something about being in your 20s that invites these moments of loneliness, these harsh blows and deep stings.

We’re told these are the best years of our life, but they really just feel like the loneliest.

What people in their thirties, forties and lamenting fifties fail to remember in the glamorized testimonials of their youth, are all the moments of deep loneliness and despair that come with being a twenty-something. They forget the life they had before finding their partners, their kids, their perfect apartments.

They forget the late nights with the wrong people, the bad jobs with the bad pay and the years of unknowing. The days followed by months of complete and utter uncertainty.

Uncertainty about everything. Jobs, lovers, friends. We’re thrown into this array of “real life” and told to figure it out. We lose jobs, gain enemies and find out that true friendships are almost as hard to find as true love. We realize that, in this chaotic whirlwind of responsibility and life planning, we’re alone.

It’s like the infinite feeling of being abroad. However, unlike that semester in college, there is no foreseeable return date.

No reassurance that in these moments of debilitating homesickness and misery that you will eventually be back, in the comfort of your familiar house with your parents protecting you.

There is no more home. This loneliness, instability and chaos is your home. This emptiness, this sh*tty apartment with no one to come home to or meals cooked for you, is your life. This instability is infinite, or at least until you grow up and find ways to make a home for yourself.

It’s Proven: Why The Greatest People Are Many Times The Loneliest