by Richard Oshetoye

Created on: June 01, 2010   Last Updated: June 02, 2010

Loneliness is a self-feeding cancer that will encapsulate then devour your entire life and being.  It affects every area of your life causing you to retreat deeper and deeper into yourself. 

You find yourself longing to feel needed and appreciated but when that desire is not recognized, you slip deeper into isolationism.

This scenario is repeated everyday by millions of people all around the world. They go about their daily lives wearing masks that hide the deep-seeded loneliness that lives inside.  They look normal on the outside but if you could see beyond the veil, you would find the pain and despair that they live with everyday.

It is amazing that one can be surrounded by a crowd of people and still feel alone and unnoticed.   

Our modern digital world has helped foster this individual isolation that has become the silent epidemic of our time.  We email, text, chat and so much more without socially interacting with a real human being.  We have made ourselves into the antithesis of the social beings we were created to be.  

Individualism and self are the echoed mantra of our times.  Such a mantra might sound cool and purposeful but, in its wake are the millions of isolated, lonely people who are silently crying out for acceptance and companionship.

Sadly we have become the living breathing realities of the Beatles song "All The Lonely People."   Millions of us live that song every day in silence.

How can this be fixed?  Sadly there are no easy answers.  Some might say it is an individual choice.  That maybe true to a point but it takes more that choice to overcome a social epidemic.  I can choose not to be lonely but then I am faced with the questions...

Who can I trust?

Who can I remove my mask before and show who I really am?

Now loneliness becomes more than just being lonely it takes on a trust factor. 

Trusting someone involves being totally vulnerable, there is no mask to hide behind, there is no more pretending - you are emotionally naked. 

For someone dealing with loneliness and a lack of social acceptance that is a major psychological hurdle to overcome.   It just might be because of the trust factor that they have retreated into themselves finding it safer to wear the mask of acceptance. 

I am not talking about weird and unsavory people, these

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