How To Feel Less Lonely

I recently discovered a simple way to feel less lonely.

It happened on the first night in my new house. There was a knock on my front door. I opened it to see two strangers standing there holding some flowers, a card and the warmest of smiles. It was my next door neighbours come to offer a warm welcome to the street, to ask how the move went and to offer help if we ever needed it.

Nothing dramatic. Quite simple really. And yet…

And yet it had quite a profound effect on me. It left me feeling really good. That this could be a place where I could belong. In fact in that moment I felt seen. Welcome. Like I mattered in this world.

Sounds a bit over the top doesn’t it?

It was just a brief conversation with my neighbours lasting less than ten minutes. But we tend to think such interactions, full of small talk don’t really matter. We are so keen to move away from them by using self-service tills or ordering food on our phone.

In, the depressingly sounding book The Lonely Century, Noreena Hertz writes about these micro-interactions. The brief conversations we have with the shop assistant, bus driver or a neighbour. She outlines the surprising evidence that micro-interactions can have a real effect how lonely we feel.