We are living in lonely times, but the human conditions make us wonder, are we alone in our loneliness? And that answer is clear.

Benches are places in public spaces where people can sit by themselves, and they are special because they’re not just a place to sit. They’re spots available to anyone and that availability turns benches into opportunities for connections.

What’s it like to live in the most isolated inhabited island in the world? Tristan da Cunha is located in the middle of the ocean between two continents. The residents who live there, all 247 of them, understand a type of loneliness like no one else. But their isolation has, for hundreds of years, been a place that others have learned from: how to survive away from anyone else.

We Don’t Talk About Bruno, the #1 hit song, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda for the Disney movie Encanto, is all about a member of the Madrigal family who no one talks about, Bruno. Encanto is a movie about family, but it’s also about trauma and how families connect, separate and become estranged. For a Disney movie, there are some very heavy themes, including war and violence and ruptures within what family members expect from each other and what they can’t accept.

When we can’t sleep, it’s a sign that we feel we’re in a strange world that can harm us and we need to stay alert and vigilant. We want others to stay away, keep their distance. Sleeplessness feeds on loneliness and loneliness fuels sleeplessness.

Nostalgia allows us to bring to mind past relationships and experiences.It’s a substitute and what sometimes people refer to as a social snack. It’s not the real meal but it can help us get through times when we’re by ourselves – alone. The direct way that nostalgia counters loneliness is it can motivate us to want to connect with people so when you’re feeling lonely, perhaps you go through old photo albums and it makes you want to reach out to someone you haven’t talked to in years.

Temperature can regulate our loneliness and how we warm up or cool down is based on social interactions. Huddle around this episode, where it’s warm and cozy-or cool and refreshing–depending on your needs at this moment.

In the animal kingdom, there are lone wolves – animals who, for reasons, break off from their families, their relatives and even their own offspring in order to form a new family of one. For lone wolves, it’s better to go it alone, than as part of the pack. Humans are no different.

We live in an age of sound and we’re bombarded with noise, from text messages, from Tik Tok, from traffic, from voices always heard around us, through thin walls, constant activities. It is unnerving to feel silence — the absence of all the noise around us. But silence is necessary – it’s positive–because it’s a recognition of all the thoughts that are going on within us when we are alone.

Late one night when he couldn’t sleep, John Koenig wrote up a definition that hadn’t existed before. It was the word Sonder. It’s the awareness that everyone around you is the main character of their own story and he posted this word on his website for the book that he hoped to write one day. That book became The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The word Sonder became the most famous entry. What’s in a name that everyone can recognize but all of us know it in different ways. Is there a better name than just calling it “loneliness?”

Comic book artists need long periods of time in solitude when they aren’t interrupted to create. And in those periods of isolation, their lived experiences and the way they see the world takes form in pencil, then colour. They draw characters and give them form and personality visually giving a shape to loneliness that neatly fits into a square frame and speaks directly to their audience of one.

What was once a too-huge world has become smaller these days, and offices can be anywhere, and nowhere at the same time. The Beat generation as written about in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is long settled and gone. But in their place, a new generation of nomads-digital ones-emerged.

From the telescope to the ostrich pillow, Playboy centrefolds and interactive posters that kiss you back, these are our picks for some of the loneliest inventions.

Fairy tales are stories that matter to those alone and those wanting an escape. Because they are all about isolation–the hero or the heroine are often cast out on their own. They seek refuge in forests that seem dark and threatening. But in those scary, unwelcoming places, they find the unexpected and the occasional magic.

In the most populous country in the world, it’s still a lonely place when you are just one.

Smell can tell us so much about our place in the world and the world around us.Our memories are linked to smells and scent can increase our loneliness when we are missing people and places and feeling alone.

These are our picks for the loneliest characters of all time, played by comedians Charlie Chaplin, Steve Martin, Robin Williams and Tom Hanks. They make moviegoers recognize how lonely it is to be someone who makes others laugh.

Sports fans have a connection to athletes–we watch them struggle to come back from injury and defeat and we feel like we are part, even as spectators, when they accomplish their goals and stand on top of the field as champions. On the outside, athletes are in top physical shape, but inside, mentally, it’s a lonely place for them.

The Emmy award-winning comedy Schitt’s Creek, created by Dan Levy, depicted what life is like in a small town for the Rose family. Eighty episodes later, they get their happy ending.
Some leave Schitt’s Creek to move to New York or California, and some stay on in the town. But what was found in each of the characters was the knowledge that when everyone knows who you are in a small town, you’re never alone.

The songs animals sing tell us something about our own loneliness. In Southeast Asia, people capture wild songbirds to be caged and forced to sing only for humans and for decades, whales were hunted and killed for their oil and meat. But the songs of animals are not meant for us to hear alone. They are sung in order for animals to connect to each other and it’s up to us to decide whether we are ready to hear the song of the lonely.

Artificial Intelligence is said to be as important in the 21st century as electricity and steam power in earlier centuries. Could we use AI to solve loneliness?

Celebrities serve a purpose in the lives of the rest of us, the unknowns. We sometimes glorify their successes and we, at times, glorify their failures. They’re not just like us. What celebrities prove to us is that even fame, and the adoration of millions, is no guarantee that we aren’t alone.