A lonely people

A thought, from one person.

There are billions of people in the world. There are likely to be trillions of differing combinations of interests personas and interests. Big cities alone can account from hundreds of thousands to a few million people within them.

We are surrounded by people.

There was the dream, the big dream. A dream where we are all one people, walking hand in hand together towards the pursuit of harmony and the promise of the future. Look to your left, or look to your right, somewhere we will always yet find another soul. Only the remote parts of the world can be truly solitary, yet even then most people live in communities still, no matter how small but never just one.

The believe is thus we are not alone. We can rely on others, as they do on us.

Or is it?

People are individuals, with individual concerns. If the nature of one is the pursuit of one's many goals in promotion of one's self, then the successful aim of the collective is thus nothing but a coincidence where a number of people can find their individual goals aligned. If that is so, are societies, communities nothing more than a collective of individuals with coincidentally aligned interests? Are friends therefore nothing but defensive mechanism of a person to provide for their individual insecurities and safety, like wearing a life jacket when travelling on a boat, only to be discarded when we have not the need to be assured of our own security?

Is this what they mean when they say that if you want something done you have to do it yourself? Because only you would care for the entirety of that particular deed?

Don't we after all discard so many people from our lives as we move on? People we once called... friends?

There'll come a time when we face something, anything, and all we would want is for someone to come and reach out a hand. But no one comes. No one answers the call. No one wants to answer the call.

It is different from death. In death we are alone, and no one can come for you. But then there are times, other things, seemingly less trivial than death, but no one wants to come. Is that not much worse a thing?

Truly we are a lonely people.