Several reports over the past couple of years suggest that loneliness is becoming a serious problem for many people. Some believe it has reached epidemic proportions in certain places. The U.S., U.K. and Japan are cited as examples. In fact, the situation is considered so serious in the U.K. that they recently established a Ministry of Loneliness to address the issue. Dear, dear me!

I live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with my wife and 6 1/2 year old daughter. My wife has a medley of relatives…brothers & sisters, nieces & nephews, aunts & uncles. Many of them visit us often including three who arrive every Saturday around noon and don’t leave until early Monday morning. They are all delightful people but, there are times when I wish I had more loneliness i.e., solitude. Medical experts have gone so far as to claim that the detrimental impact of loneliness on a person’s health is tantamount to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That’s welcome news to me because it means I only smoke 3 cigs a day. Well, anyway, that’s the way I figure it.

I have spent much of my adult life living in predominantly Buddhist countries and have been lucky to do so. Tolerance is one of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism. However, when evil is tolerated, tolerance is no longer a virtue…it is simply a nefarious rationale. The shenanigans in the West during the past few years provide ample testimony to that. The rapacious tentacles of “political correctness” and the plague of woke sensibilities are a scourge upon the collective consciousness and some of the casualties have been truth, intelligent discourse and humor.

Getting back to the epidemic of loneliness, however. The issue is not what is tolerated but, what is not tolerated. It seems to me that one thing so many people find intolerable is their own company. “Kick me, beat me but, please don’t leave me alone!” I mean, for heaven’s sake, if you don’t enjoy your own company why the hell would you think anybody else would? A person who can enjoy solitude will rarely endure loneliness.