“Everyone knows that experience of being surrounded by people and feeling completely alone.”
—— Brené Brown
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I was at a live music venue with a few good friends when this man I barely know approached me and shook my hand. He said nothing. There was pretty loud music playing but the band (that I wanted to see) had yet to start. I struggled a bit to try and place the man’s face. I knew that we’d met… that we had a connection. I just couldn’t recall how, when or where.
He smiled and I said “good to see you” and then he walked away. A few moments later I found myself looking for him. It didn’t take long. Just outside the venue near the door, he was talking with a young woman that I know. She’s a close friend of another good friend and as I approached, they both gave me a welcoming look. Inviting me to join the conversation.
The guy (close to my age) was doing all the talking and the young woman was listening politely. She was working the door. There to collect money from people wishing to enter the main room. She was being very polite but it seemed to me that she was listening mostly to be just that… polite. Happy to be included (and to perhaps lend assistance) I quickly engaged the man in what turned into a long conversation that became a discussion which then turned into a kind of debate.
Although what we were debating was not exactly clear. Any specific topic this guy got on, soon wandered all over the place but the general tone eventually became obvious. The tone… the gist of everything this guy was saying, was that the world is going to shit and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
There was certainly nothing I could do to steer the conversation to a direction where we might consider some ideas, hopes and dreams and/or strategies for positive change. Or where things are actually getting better. Even a suggestion that things aren’t as bad as this guy was making everything out to be. This is how the discussion became a debate. I started by simply offering examples that I thought show some promise and he would quickly counter with why I was either wrong, or just being too simplistic.
So I stopped talking.
I just stopped talking altogether and looked at him… as he continued to talk, and talk, and… he went on for a long time. He talked quickly and continuously for several minutes. Long sentences with no pauses between. Doing my best to maintain eye contact, I found myself trying to project calm in the face of what I could now see as this man’s frantic desperation. A desperate need to connect while simultaneously doing the very thing most likely to result in the exact opposite.
He was so lonely. Among all these people and while actually engaged in an interaction with a person looking straight at him…
This man was totally alone.
And what he was saying was mostly a repeat of the things he’d said when I was responding verbally. Eventually he said… “Well I guess when it gets right down to it we are really saying the same thing but just from different perspectives. He then shook my hand and then me and the friend I’d come with (who had approached at some point and was standing by silently) walked away to another part of the bar.
Where we had a conversation I will share when this will again have to be…
To be continued…
