In the days that run social media can be an important tool, promote connections with people of the past and present, sharing information and even keeps people with what happens at the moment. On the other hand, and at the same time, it can create some distance in the importance of developing real relations of presence.

We all try to make connections. We want closeness to the family. We all want to get on well with co-workers. We want people with whom we can share our thoughts and with whom we can have positive experiences. But, as we know, there are people with greater or lesser difficulties of relationship.

For some people social media can be a tool used to show that are very happy and with a large number of friends, camouflaging the pain of loneliness and isolation.

There are many people in the world who are alone, which is different from having the opportunity to choose to be alone with oneself, alone to think and reflect. Loneliness is different, it refers to painful feelings of isolation. The word loneliness and according to the dictionary, explains, among other things, as a deep sense of emptiness and isolation, therefore, having in itself a negative connotation.

For some people it seems easy to connect with other people, for others it can be extremely difficult. However, being alone can be experienced as positive, pleasurable and emotionally invigorating. We have the saying that “better alone than in bad company.” When we are alone, we do not necessarily have to feel lonely, many people choose to be alone, to enjoy and even to feel good in their own company.

But being alone, isolated, remembers sadness, being forgotten or ignored, which may not be a pleasant situation. Loneliness can be seen as being physically alone, but there is loneliness that even in the midst of a crowd, or accompanied by friends and family that give us love, we feel empty, trying to fill that void and that seems not to be reached.

To a certain extent it will not be the number of friends we have acquired, but the qualities of relationships with us and with people we call friends. Time and availability are essential to nurture close and lasting friendships not only with others, but also with ourselves in order to promote feelings of less solitude.

Reinaldo Diniz