Loneliness, Love and All That's Between

Book excerpt: Loneliness, as old as time itself, is not easy to define. It's a bit like love -- you know when you feel it, but cannot specifically define it. However, no one who ever walked on the face of this earth has gone through life without experiencing the pain of being lonely, alienated, and feeling unconnected to others, unloved, or even rejected. Although we, in the 21st century, pride ourselves as inventors [the Internet, computers, reaching the moon, and biomedical advances] we did not invent this one -- loneliness was here way before any of us, and consequently we can find it mentioned in the Bible, literature, art, and philosophy. And, as things appear now -- it is here to stay. In addition to addressing loneliness, its causes, and how it affects our health, well-being, and quality of life, we also discuss what loneliness anxiety is, and the difference between loneliness and depression, for those two may go together, but are actually different. While loneliness is inescapable, it does not mean that when we experience or feel it 'coming' that we just wait and embrace the pain until 'it' decides to leave us. People have developed various ways of coping with loneliness; learning to either avoid or better cope with it. This book lists a variety of successful methods to reduce the pain of loneliness, and in some ways, to reduce the probability of it happening.