loneliness
I watched a movie yesterday about a guy named Sam Bell who works on a mining operation that’s on the far side of the moon. The catch is he is completely alone, with only a robot for companionship. Soon it’s revealed that he is actually a clone of the original Sam Bell, every three years the clone is killed and a new one is woken up. Apparently the original Sam Bell and the rest of the world is completely unaware that there is a person living on the moon.
The picture of loneliness was striking. When two clones end up awake in the base at the same time, the old one doesn’t know how to interact with the new one, asking the robot “Is someone in the room with us?”
It reminded me of a part in Blue Like Jazz, where an astronaut (named ‘Don Astronaut’) is on a space station. He has a space suit that keeps him alive without water, air, or food. There’s an accident, and he is hurled out of the space station to drift around the earth in orbit for the rest of his life. Eventually his beard and hair grew to the point where it obscured his view of the earth, leaving Don Astronaut in a perpetually dark environment, all alone.
Both of these things made me think about loneliness. More specifically, I started thinking about the things we do to try and keep ourselves from being alone. I remember when I was a teenager, I’d play an online game called Enemy Territory. There was a christian group that I would play with. I never met any of the people in person, but I’d play this game with them, and we would have voice chat during the game so after a while I felt part of this community. It gave me a sense of belonging.
I wonder how much of what I do now is to avoid loneliness. I am a social person, we’re all wired to be in community with other people. So where do you find your community?
