The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: Loneliness

  • Reading “Big Sur” in Shelter-in-Place While Going to Big Sur

    Reading “Big Sur” in Shelter-in-Place While Going to Big Sur

    A reflection from a former Lumberjack news editor

    When the entire world is going mad and cities are in disarray and the economy is through the tubes and the government is ordering the people to stay indoors and keep distant from human contact and all the unknowns and uncertainties and precariousness are causing anxieties and confusion and insane isolated thinking, then the only logical solution is to search for the magnificent eternal golden light in Big Sur where Jack Kerouac lost his illumination and was succumbed to mad mad maddening disillusion and deterioration of mind.

    Amidst a global pandemic and forced isolation (both for curving the spread of the disease and government say-so) Kerouac’s “Big Sur” may seem like an unlikely companion during cabin fever tendencies but he nails the coffin of loneliness surrounded by madness…and we are swimming in madness in 2020 and social distancing is causing us loneliness…he may be known for traveling on the road but the majority of his writing deals with the personal struggle of the unrevealed and intangible and intrapersonal relationships with exile and aloneness.

    It was time to go back to find some sanity while the whole world was ravaging in chaos.

    Last week I received a card from my obaasan written in shaky cursive:

    “I’m not myself now/can’t think much things now…” Her youngest son died in the middle of all this virus business and the experience of losing her youngest before her own passing into the next existence and not being able to perform a proper Japanese funeral has weighed a heavy heart on my nearly 90-year-old reincarnation of the bodhisattva Quan Yin. The letter is marked from Monterey, my hometown, just a couple dozen miles from Big Sur, which I am currently in the thick of. Whereas Kerouac fell into his madness, I was born into mine…and it was time to go back to find some sanity while the whole world was ravaging in chaos.

    Passing San Jose on the 280 at rush hour, or what normally is, and we stop not one time and I am convinced there is a God in heaven and miracles exist and coincidences mean something more than just what they don’t.

    A pitter patter of rain began to fall as my partner and I sped away from our Arcata apartment and headed down the curvy empty roads of the 101 en route to console an ailing mother from 6 feet away. My paint-scratched and hood-dented Volkswagen happily ate the white lines through redwood country, wineries, extending bridges and golden rolling hills full of deer and foxes and chirping birds. With everyone staying in doors, the urbanized are becoming again what Gary Snyder calls “wild.” Only 10 cars on the Golden Gate Bridge and all of the city, void of the Tenderloin, which sidewalks are unseen due to the amount of popup tents and stretched out tarps and rucksacks rolling in the gutters. Passing San Jose on the 280 at rush hour, or what normally is, and we stop not one time and I am convinced there is a God in heaven and miracles exist and coincidences mean something more than just what they don’t. Seven hours and not a minute more since we left Humboldt County the magnificent sand dunes of my childhood explode into view as the sun sinks behind cannery row, the fisherman’s wharf and into the pacific.

    We knock on the windowpane glass without warning. My obaasan, 4-foot-5 in frame in blue uwabaki and nearly all white thick Hokkaido curls reminiscent of the ancient Ainu people of our ancestors opens the door white as a ghost. We appear as road warriors traveling to find oil but she is happy nonetheless to see her most handsomest grandson and granddaughter in law (I know this because she tells us so in a faint whisper of grief). She is nearly silent and full of half smiles and sad lonely eyes staring off into a point in space I am unable to see. There is nothing more difficult than to deny a Japanese grandmother’s invitation of hot food and conversation… but these are harrowing times and one must put down their foot for the betterment of others… especially kindhearted compassionate grandmothers who want nothing more than to fill bellies and tell stories.

    Without being able to hug her or get close enough for her to hear me hurt my soul but the space we shared amidst all the craziness going on filled my heart with such joy that I could feel the sanity I had lost while sheltering in place replenish.

    We part for the night with three bows and head to Big Sur first thing in the morning. We were supposed to spread the ashes of my uncle but bureaucracies have slowed down (who would have thought possible they could move even slower) and checks clearing takes longer and so we had no urn and only mandatory intention of flying down the beautifully rugged pacific coast cliffs hugging the Santa Lucia Mountains to the east and infinite deep neon blue waters crashing west. All parks are closed and scattered hikers from who-knows-where park along the highway to hike in. We stop at Bixby Creek of Kerouac’s “Big Sur” but it is not the same for all the turnoffs are filled with parked cars and tourists and selfies… or maybe it is the same because on his last hitchhiking adventure up from Big Sur to Monterey 1,000-2,000 cars passed him by and he was no longer able to relate. We ate lunch beneath the shade of an oak tree 100 feet above the water and 15 miles from the hot springs. We were by ourselves with the lonely wails of the sea and the roaring of the waves and the ghostly spirits of Kerouac and my uncle.

    On our way out of town we said goodbye to my grandmother. She stood behind the screen door as we stood in the sun with bandanas and masks wrapped around our faces. She was in a cheerier mood and her energy level was heightened. She wore full smiles behind her grief and talked about the chaos of the world being unbalanced. Without being able to hug her or get close enough for her to hear me hurt my soul but the space we shared amidst all the craziness going on filled my heart with such joy that I could feel the sanity I had lost while sheltering in place replenish. Kerouac pronounces, “The more ups and downs, the more joy I feel. The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I feel,” and I believe it to be important we share the same intimacies while we are submerged in the unknown dangers of threats and hazards.

  • We’re All Lonely But It’s Not Our Fault

    We’re All Lonely But It’s Not Our Fault

    Shifting the blame of loneliness from individuals to institutions

    There’s an epidemic of loneliness in modern America. It’s a trauma encompassing political, economic and social realms. We’re all alone, but it’s not any one person’s fault.

    Imagine the stereotypical millennial: they moved home after college, unable to find a job or afford a home of their own. It may sound pathetic. But maybe they’ve found the home they need.

    The alternative for the millennial generation is living alone in an overpriced closet. It leaves them fragile and alone. A 2018 national survey by the healthcare provider Cigna found 46% of Americans felt alone some or all of the time. Adults aged 18-22 responded as the loneliest age group. A 2010 AARP survey had similar findings.

    Lonely people are vulnerable. Alone, a small problem becomes a crisis. That crisis festers and becomes a trauma that stays with a person for life. Without a support network, a minor issue can snowball into an avalanche. Studies have linked loneliness to depression, distress, suffering, poor sleep, high blood pressure and death.

    Loneliness almost feels normal in a society that sees the world in terms of the individual. Privacy can feel like success. Appearing independent is an achievement. And we see weakness in a cry for help.

    We weren’t always this way. Prior to modern industry, humans often lived in close-knit communities, whether related by blood or not. Fast-forward to the 1950s, and the nuclear family emerges. There’s the working husband, the stay-at-home wife and the two or three kids. It might have been romantic then, but a 2020 article from The Atlantic by David Brooks shows this small, private family wreaked havoc on our social lives.

    Jump forward 60 more years and you get the loneliness epidemic. One could criticize nuclear families for pages—read Brooks’ piece for a full account. But as they relate to loneliness, they popularized small families and mistrust of anyone outside of those families.

    Small families can produce lonely individuals. Imagine a single child. Imagine their parents pass away. That child then has to live on their own, without the support of a family around them. Financial, personal or professional stresses can lead to a free-fall when you have no safety net.

    Small, nuclear families disintegrate, and children are left on their own.

    Youth are finding new ways to survive the aftermath of a nuclear family disaster.

    The good news is we seem to be adapting. We are, in some sense, valuing extended families again. Pew Research Center found a record 64 million Americans living in multigenerational households in 2018. In 2016, Pew found the most common living arrangement for the 18-34 age group to be living with parents.

    We’re also expanding families beyond biological boundaries through shared housing units and groups for single parents. These new arrangments provide a way forward that doesn’t necessitate stay-at-home wives or gender discrimination. We’re finding ways to balance our want for individual freedom with our need for a family.

    Living together doesn’t necessarily make for less lonely people. We should be cautious about praising housing arrangements that can be born out of economic necessity, but research suggests many are choosing less lonely housing by choice. Living together is a good first step toward a more stable society.

    Youth are finding new ways to survive the aftermath of a nuclear family disaster. Make fun of the millennial in their parents’ garage if you want. But it looks to us like they might have found shelter from modern loneliness. They’re going to be OK.