Quote:
Originally Posted by TheByzantine
Can anyone ever really get to know another (The SS tried to)?
SYNOPSIS
James Park
Loneliness is an aching void in the center of our beings,
a deep longing to love and be loved,
to be fully known and accepted by at least one other person.
It is a hollow, haunting sound sweeping through our depths,
chilling our bones and causing us to shiver.
Is there a person, anywhere,
who has never felt the stab of loneliness,
who has never experienced
the eerie distance of isolation and separation,
who has never suffered the pain of rejection or the loss of love?
The final rupture or breakdown of a valued loving relationship,
the sudden death of someone who was close and special,
an unavoidable separation from a loved one
—these things strike loneliness into our hearts,
the intense experience of the absence of that specific person.
Besides longing for a specific person,
sometimes loneliness has no name attached.
This is the general feeling of being alone,
isolated, separated from others.
And there is a third kind of loneliness—existential loneliness—
which is even deeper and more pervasive than either of the first two.
It often disguises itself as longing for a specific person
or pretends to be yearning for contact with anyone,
but this deeper lack or emptiness-of-being
is not really a kind of loneliness at all.
Being together with other people, even people we intensely love,
does not overcome this deep incompleteness of being.
This inner default of self-hood has never been solved by relationships,
no matter how good and close and warm our relationships might be.
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I think the answer to your original questions is "no" we can never fully know a person. Humans aren't static creatures, we are in constant flux, active and reactive in our environment, malleable and dynamic. The people we know are chaotic in the true sense of the word. A sliver of a perception ripples and dances in us. The essence of knowing would then have to be embracing constant change, which is of course, a contradiction.
To address your synopsis, I find the first description to be more of grief than of loneliness. Despair that follows loss and disappointment. Grief digs deep holes.
The second part, the existential loneliness of humans, is unique to some individuals. Though most of psychiatry/sociology would agree that humans are social creatures, for some, I simply do not think that is true. Some are true lone wolves so to speak. Solitary creatures forced into a world foreign to them, surrounded by those of our kind, but so very very different. If one could accept their own truest nature, what kind of joy would that bring? What kind of freedom? What kind of relief?