Well it's Valentine's Day, and as usual I don't want to write about it, and I do.
For while I don't want to be seen to be encouraging that garish orgy of chocolate boxes, sappy sentiment, and heart shaped balloons.
The horror, the horror.
And for me Valentine's Day came early this year...
It is a great excuse to talk about the lonely.
Which I never get tired of doing, because I meet them every day, and we are facing a crisis of loneliness.
In the West, we live faster, higher in the air, farther from our workplaces, and more singly than at any time in the past. Social scientists will be struggling to understand the consequences of these transformations for decades to come, but one thing is clear: Loneliness is our baggage, a huge and largely unacknowledged cultural failing.
More Canadians than ever live alone, and almost one-quarter describe themselves as lonely. It is the great irony of our age that we have never been better connected, or more adrift.
The issue isn’t just social, it’s a public-health crisis in waiting. If you suffer from chronic loneliness, you run the risk of illness, and premature death.
We all need to do more to help those who are suffering
The old and the young.
While recognizing that we will never seriously tackle the problem of loneliness, until we build a more equal, more caring society, and defeat those who would have us live as slaves in their cruel selfish jungle.
The day is also a good excuse to thank you my readers for your love and support. To wish you all the love in the world.
And for those of you who might be feeling lonely today, it's also a chance to play this video again that I love so much.
The story of an old bicycle that found a new purpose in life...
Because it's what I tell the lonely all the time.
Nobody is useless. There is always time to reinvent yourself.
It's not over until it's over...
So from me and my amazing companion Sebastien, the Prince of the Saguenay and the love of my life.
And my other teddy bear...
Who has been with me since I was four years old, and is definitely NOT a Valentine's bear.
Here's to the power that will change the world.
Here's to the power of love....
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5 comments:
An interstellar love story.
Happy Valentines Day, hope you and yours enjoy a safe and warm day out of the Polar Vortex :))
TS
Indeed! I just stayed in with my beloved old cat. Translating someting on ... global warming.
it is strange how we have become a lonely nation or nations. I don't know how we got that way, but I've watched it over the past 50 years, more pronounced since the 1980s.
Whenever I read something about loneliness I remember a segment on perhaps 60 minutes. It was an interview with a woman who lived in Venice, California, in the 1980s What she said was so interesting, because she had been part of a group of friends, and they were in her will, etc. and here she was 5 years later and didn't know any of them any more and she wondered how they all got like that. The documentary piece always stayed with me. How does that happen? It maybe we are a more mobile society, people move, loose contact, etc. but some times we still remain in the same towns. In the end, we are old, and we have nothing left, not even our children. I can understand out living all your friends and family, but perhaps we just got into that "its all about me" just a tad too much.
It takes work to actually maintain friends and family. Some times we don't know how to do the work, some times we're too lazy.
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