Why be lonely?

JPB123 hope you recover quickly and can get back to driving. Taxis are all very well but I do miss the ability to just get up and go.

When I suddenly lost a lot of my sight I stopped going out as much as it all seemed too difficult especially as I am also quite hard of hearing. I soon realised that that was making me depressed so I now get out as much as I can. On down days I find that listening to an audiobook helps. There’s something about having a pleasant voice telling me a story that feels companionable.

Kircubbin. Your SIL sounds like an entitled idiot who lacks even basic compassion or a rudimentary understanding of how society works or the nature of loneliness. He's obviously still "relatively" young, with a wife, family, job, colleagues, friends of a similar age and probably hobbies. His life at the moment is full and active (as it should be). He has absolutely no idea how it can all change, especially as we age. Or indeed how poverty, sickness, bereavement and a whole host of other knocks can affect one's mental and physical ability to engage. To say nothing of society's acceptance and perception of us.

As for inviting strangers into one's home. What could possibly go wrong. I am also quite certain that most people would form a queue to spend an afternoon with their elderly widowed or disabled neighbour. Not!

I think he should stick to pontificating about his own lived experience. Does he also have sage advice for the world's starving or persecuted? I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear from him.

🤭🤭

When I was a teenager I visited elderly people, via age concern etc took them out, invited them to my home and continued this after getting married.
My DD lives in Europe and over the last 9 years has taken in 4 different ‘strangers’ not for a day but for months at a time, one for nearly 2 years. Those strangers were refugees. Now they are friends.
She lives in a small flat but made room and often subsidised them financially despite not being well paid herself.
She is a genuinely good person and I am so proud of her.

So you should be!
It must take some real patience, and genuine heartfelt kindness to do that.

I couldn't, I know.

Thanks MissA. Yes, a special person. There is much more she does to help people she doesn’t know but don’t want to boast.

Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

teabagwoman I’m also hard of hearing and wear an aid in each ear (totally deaf in right ear but that aid’s microphone sends the sounds to my left ear’s aid) I find it very tiring trying to keep up with conversations and have to tweak the volume (via my phone app) when in particularly noisy environments. The reason I’ve detailed all this is basically because some times I really can’t cope with not being able to keep with the flow and so I sit and listen. It’s been 2yrs since I lost my hearing and is still a struggle to be part of a group conversation. I just wanted to comment on your post to say ‘I hear you and you’re not alone.
Hope 2025 brings you good health and some joyous moments

Teabagwoman…..thank you x

Pheebee thank you for your understanding and good wishes. It’s reassuring to know that other people find trying to follow conversations exhausting.

May you have peace and happiness in 2025.

Deafness is a huge isolater! I too am deaf - totally now in the left and going down rapidly in the right. And you're so right - it is so tiring trying to keep up with conversations and follow what's going on! And the meaningless noise (the sounds your brain just can't translate into words) is equally exhausting. You finish up at the end of what should have been a pleasant day or evening just wanting to be on your own in peace and quietness! I don't know what the answer is. On Boxing Day I was speaking to a lovely young man in his early 20s who started losing his hearing when he was 13. He seemed to be coping much better than I do with similar Bluetooth hearing aids and said that he relied very much on lip reading. It humbled me really that he was coping so uncomplainingly at such a young age.
Luckily over the years I have learned to be content by myself and rarely feel lonely now. I still teach two tai chi classes a week and meet up with friends for coffee or lunch - just two or three of us at a time, which is manageable as far as hearing goes, so life isn't totally empty although my family are scattered the length and breadth of Britain.
Karmalady you're right, I think perhaps we do tend to turn inwards as we age and become more contemplative and content with our own selves.
And I don't think OP's SiL was being flippant with his remark about going out and looking for friends - if that's what you want to do. I know that's what I have done in the past. As a young fit man with a wife and possibly a young family he can't relate to old, unwell, physically disabled people who are unable to 'get out there and meet people'.
My mother used to say that God doesn't give us something to bear without also giving us the means to bear it. I would love it if that was true!