Sept 2004 

 
This month’s Jenny’s Corner takes from two outstanding thinkers and writers on the subject of isolation and loneliness. And on a more practical level how in our own small way we can combat this. One way is by Practising Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty” (see April 1996 Jenny’s Corner). “As it spreads, so does a vision of ‘guerrilla goodness’. Like all revolution, guerrilla goodness begins slowly, with a single act. Let it be yours.”

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle off compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty … We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”    Albert Einstein

“[It is] the isolation that prevails everywhere - above all in our age - yet has not fully developed; it has not reached its limit. For everyone tries to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but in self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude.

“Everywhere in these days people have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they have separated themselves from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens…But until then we must keep the banner flying.”     Fyodor Dostoevsky