Heavens, man. Are you really going to abruptly end this otherwise moving blog entry on a cliffhanger? What is the status of Chaz at present? All is well, I hope.

Ebert: Oh, goodness. She is just fine. Running day and night as producer of the new TV show. It was her appendix.

Ahh, yes, Joni Mitchell.
Slow it into a minor key for a melancholy take:
Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Don't it always seem to go...

I grew up at such a time that when the internet started to truly shape into the initial murmurings of what it is today, I was old enough to remember those times today, but young enough that that fact was by a slim margin. I guess you could say that I was amongst the first generation to grow up with the internet without it having the tacit "naturalness" of a pre-existing institution, the way that all those since me have known it.

I've thought about it at length. It's very easy for people my age to be gripped in nihilism. It's frightening that it's become such a natural and familiar thing for us, to use the anecdotal generalities of my experience. We have such a powerful need to broadcast our every thought, to create a record of ourselves. It's one of the few ways, I think, that we can find some sort of confirmation that we have affected something, even by a slight margin. Almost everybody I know, either personally, second-handedly, or observationally, has turned to the opiates of the current day. Escapist entertainments, the addictions of rage and intolerance, alcohol and drugs and emotionally absent sex, endless political square-offs..the void seems to be growing.

I want to be a filmmaker. I was actually inspired to pursue the field after reading your "Great Movies" article on "Yojimbo." I dwell constantly on postmodernist theory. Pastiche, the graveyard pillaging of art, the death of original expression. I can't tell if nihilism propagates such ideas or vice versa. It's hard, sometimes, to feel that expression is anything but purposeless. I live for the small gems, for every confirmation that there's some fight in it yet. I think that with the alienation of our times, we're all looking for a rock to build a home upon; all the old ones were shredded by a great flood and we're scrabbling out from the depths in need of shelter but weighed with the burden of creating new ones, without the familiarity of wood and brick and stone.

I'm not sure how cogent any of that was, but it seems wrong to reread it. Godspeed for Chaz, I have every confidence that this will be but a passing note of somber sobriety.

Ebert: You write: " Almost everybody I know, either personally, second-handedly, or observationally, has turned to the opiates of the current day."

Sometimes I feel that in my lifetime I have seen a healthy society ripped to pieces.

Thank you for writing that. It was as if you read the running commentary inside my head. Thank you.

This reminded me of two of the most sublime moments of my life - sitting in the corner of a small diner in downtown Chicago when I was in college (in Iowa) - the day I decided I had to live there; and the night I stood directly underneath the Eiffel Tower the first time I saw it, letting the light rain hit my face as I looked up for what must have been minutes and feeling like the luckiest guy alive. As someone who grew up in rural nowhere with a family with no money , but a lot of heart, these moments - alone - allowed me to reflect on just how far I had come. They were moments I will never forget.

This was beautiful. Thank you.

Oh dear, my well-wishes to your wife.

One of the cruelties of life and love are such, that once you've become aware of the pleasure they both bring, that's right around when they begin to be taken from you.

Be well.

Where do we all come from?

I've always heard that you can keep company and still feel lonely. At the same time, as I read this column, I find out you can be all alone and not feel lonely at all. Indeed I don't have it all figured out yet Rog.

Myself, I get lonely sometimes. Right now I feel a little lonely, but when I get into moods like this I honest to god come to your website to read blog posts like this one. It doesn't exactly provide a cure, but I find reading about life from a different perspective is tremendously helpful in understanding it, and understanding why and how I feel how I feel in my situation.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes when you feel alone all it takes is a good blog about the nostalgia of rice cookers to bring your spirits back up.

Another good piece, Roger.

I know that when I lived in London, it felt strangely empty the longer I was there, as if it wasn't nearly as wonderful as it would be if I'd had a sidekick, someone whom I could share the thrills of experiencing a new culture with.

When I came back to the US, that part was often the hardest to explain to people. The mere fact that I'd been overseas thrilled family and friends and the last thing I wanted to do was tell them that London wasn't as great as I'd hoped.

Of course now that I'm home, I yearn to be around London's energy again. A classic case of 'the grass is always greener', I suppose.

What a beautiful, beautiful post, Roger.

I, too, have never been a lonely person. I, too, feel like that will change if ever I lose my partner. I am an inveterate overthinker, but it's something I don't like to think about too much. Y'know?

Get better, Chaz!

Thank you for a lovely piece of writing, Roger. I sometimes wonder if the Internet makes us more lonely, like cities do, because it gives us the illusion of contact without actual interaction. On the other hand, I always loved being a stranger (and white) in Japan because I stuck out, and when I traveled alone, I met some truly wonderful and interesting people (and also loved exploring out-of-the-way places, including coffee shops). I sometimes regretted not being able to share these discoveries with others, but then again, I may not have had some of these experiences, or met some of these people, if I had not been travelling alone.

I don't think people should date or (even worse) get married because they don't want to be lonely, or because they feel that they NEED another person to feel worthy. The happiest couples are the ones who enjoy each other's company, and seek it out, but have no need to be together every second of the day, confident that in those moments when they really do need the other person to be there, he or she will be. Besides, loneliness destroys confidence, and NOTHING is more attractive in a person than confidence.

People do, however, need friends, and they do need family support, whether it be from a wife, a child, a parent, or a sibling. We need someone who has known us for many years, and who loves us because of who we are, and will support us in any way that he or she can.

In the book Mon by Soseki Natsumi, I came across one of the most wonderful couples in literature. Oyone and Sosuke do not have the support of their families, and the book makes no romantic illusions about how tedious and boring married life can be. Yet, you feel they will be okay, and weather the storm of life, because they have each other.

Finally, I don't think loneliness has anything to do with being alone. In fact, many times when I'm alone, I do not feel lonely at all. Loneliness is caused by a detachment from the world around us, or the world within us. Doing activities with other people will cure the former condition, while doing activities in solitude will cure the latter.

You are lucky that you never felt alone in your youth, Roger, and only once in your adult life. It hardens the heart, and stops the world from turning, as you know from your one experience. But to be loved is to never truly be lonely. Forgetting that is what triggers loneliness.

And thanks for your comment on my blog. All of those comments helped me feel less lonely :-)

You blew me away at the end. I didn't see it coming and the two paragraphs hit me hard.

There is a David Blaine (the magician) parody on youtube.com in which the unwitting participants shout, "Stop it right now..Get out of my head!"

I really loved this blog and I certainly could relate to much of it. Thanks for the definition of a "bore"..so true..and the delightful chicken story, too. I hope Chaz is well now..may you never be without each other!

Sometimes I wonder how much the internet has shaped my persona both online and off. I'm one of the first generations to have had instant messaging at the age of 12, and my middle school memories are contained just as much in chatlogs as they are in photobooks. I worry as the web gets more and more centralized with Facebook and Twitter that the magical anonymity will fade, but maybe that's healthier for me. As your standard lonely teenager I longed for the basic desire of conversation, and with the internet I had plenty of it. But the outside world is still the bread and butter of existence. The only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that I'm an excellent speller thanks to instant spellcheck. Those squiggly red lines drive me crazy.

As one of the lonely people reading this blog, I must say that I wish I had an explanation for the loneliness. I recently realized that what I thought was longing for a spouse is really just longing for someone to share all of life with.

I know more of loneliness than most well-to-do people in prosperous societies. Of the loneliness of abject poverty in Rio or Mumbai I knew nothing till I confronted death, blindness and poverty on my own.

The truth is, Life in essence is very lonely. We isolate ourselves from its harshness in prosperity, social lives, careers, education, the trappings of safety in numbers. I remember being on a BART train looking in rapture at San Francisco in the distance. Nobody else noticed. Working Professionals all looked tired, lifeless and lonely. Although they were going home to family and friends.

And those are the well-adjusted ones. There are people on the fringe seeking each other out in the belief that only there can they find comraderie. I've been at face-to-face gatherings with people I've associated with on the Internet, only to find myself in the company of other lonely people.

Or theme people. People in the SCA, or a beer-brewing, nearly nihilistic society, who found connection in their theme.

Of marriages, I see few fulfilling to both of a couple. Of families, I've seen dysfunction and loneliness.

The Recluse live a numbing, wretched life. Some Recluses have good reason to fear or hate the outside world. The Internet provides the companionship they'd otherwise have to leave their homes to pursue. It's not real companionship, but unfortunately for a few that is all they will ever have.

The internet is great for connections. Not so great for connectiveness, but we're not skilled in connectiveness either. We join together when there is an agenda, gaming Sim-life rules.

Loneliness is more a Life than Second Life problem.

I think the real loneliness is fear of the people we love dying before we do. If we fear death, we fear life. If we fear losing others, we fear Love.

We cram it with meaning. We create Gods and angels and Heaven so we can avoid the truth - the Universe doesn't care about our happiness, we're born, and we all die, and there's nothing we can do about it.

I think the only way to conquer loneliness is to conquer that fear, and make peace with the Universe we're a part of, and the life that we're living. To not demand meaning in everything that happens. To just enjoy being alive when we're alive and not care that at some point that will end, or that everyone you care about can perish before you. When it happens, the anguish still hurts, and stays with you for a lifetime. But you live on and still find joy, wonder and love.

Then, you're no longer alone.

All my best to Chaz for a speedy recovery. I do hope she is doing well.

As for your article, so insightful and eloquent, as always. You put perfectly into words things I have felt many times and couldn't express. I think you're right, too, a lot of the time you can't know loneliness until you have someone (or a relationship, I guess) you can't imagine losing. I also know, though, the wonderful feeling you described of being perfectly content all by yourself and loving the adventure of it. It is a powerful, happy feeling.

You're writings are as much of an art as the art that you review for a living. What a wonderful ode to your wife.

I lived in LA for five years. I wanted to be an actor. It was there that I discovered what loneliness is. Especially in an industry where I was always told to look after myself, my image, my career. I was to use people to network. Friendships were a means to an end.

This was hard for me and I didn't want to believe it. In all that time, I couldn't get one person to sit and have coffee with me. They would invite me to parties instead where I felt more alone than when I was sitting in the quiet corner of my studio apartment.

I'm not saying everyone in LA is like this, but that was my experience for the relatively short time I was there. And I am not socially inept. I was the homecoming king of my highschool and had many meaningful reciprocated friendships in my young life.

On one rare occasion someone accepted my invitation to coffee. There I expressed my feelings and frustrations on the matter. They listened intently and replied "Well, that the business and if you can't handle it you should leave."

I left. Gave up on my dream. But at least now I have a friend who will listen to my story of failure.

If you never felt loneliness before now, Roger, you may be in the running for Luckiest Human Being on the Planet.

I was raised Roman Catholic and was very happy as a child. When I was thirteen my older sister came out to me, and I was faced with the choice between my God and my family. I spent the next few years -- terrible, heartwrenching, sob into the pillow all night years -- trying to choose. I prayed all the time for some divine sign to tell me what to do, but none ever came. In the end, blood was thicker than Baptismal water, and I lost my religion over a sister with whom I now can't spend more than a few days in the same house. Ever since then I've been lonely, a little bit, all the time.

I think you and Joni Mitchell are right: there is no replacing the loss of the certainty that you are loved.

I am a mentally ill agoraphobic, & used to live in a mental ward. I haven't spoken to anyone in the flesh (except two family members) for over two years now, and in the past four years I've been outside probably less than ten times.

Yes of course I get lonely, sometimes so much that I literally can't breathe when it hits me all over again. But us humans are nothing if not adaptable, aren't we? I know that even if some dream person knocked on my door right now I would be in no condition to be with them, so I adapt because I have to... and my life is lonely but it is not without joy and meaning. I have my writing and my art, my "escapist entertainments" (including the movies, of course) and above all my internet - the only means, for all intents and purposes, that I CAN communicate with the world or continue doing anything beyond mere existing. These things are quite literally my lifeline - and posts like this (as so many of yours) are a tiny part of the life in it that keeps me going for one more day.

Ebert: For all that I worry about the internet, it performs an invaluable function for me. When I was talking and walking with ease, I might not have identified so quickly with your message.

Roger, most importantly, hope Chaz is well now. You write so eloquently about loneliness. I hope she's back home now and doing well and that the loneliness has vanished!

Beautiful sentiments, to be sure, but...really?

Those who stare at the TV for hours might as well be sitting on a stone under a tree in a primeval village; indeed, that might offer more interest and variety

How on earth is this different from sitting in a dark movie theater for hours? I certainly don't regret spending many hours sitting in front a TV watching The Wire, nor would either the stone or tree provide more interest or variety. Although admittedly the village might.

Ebert: I'm not talking about appointment TV.

I look at movies because it is my job. It has moments of pleasure and moments of pain.

I've always loved to read. But I never liked a thick book, a massive tome. I preferred shorter books, short stories, magazine and newspaper articles. I love to get and try to understand and correlate various opinions and points of view. My ideal fiction writer was Theodore Sturgeon, but I need hundreds of viewpoints, not just one. A great film review can be more insightful than a film... revealing points of view I missed, and adding glimpses of the critic. I like to be entertained, to think, and to offer my humble insights.

I'm currently wandering around Southeast Asia with a backpack. Meandering through strange cities with a massive language barrier, I've seen both sides of that loneliness coin. I've been lonely while surrounded by people, and absolutely content with solitude. I think, as with everything, a balance must be maintained. I always imagine a social gauge in my head then empties and fills pending human interaction.

I love the notion that the most useful side effect of education is a preparedness to keep oneself entertained.

Great post Roger. Peace.

This is my new favorite of all your blog entries. I'm never going to forget this.

All the lonely people may yearn for things they have never had and sometimes they yearn without knowing what they do have.

For me, this column is a lovely love letter to a successful marriage.

Better than having a witness, like someone to record and narrate your adventures, a Dr. Watson to your Sherlock Holmes, is to have someone to share your adventures with, to take along with you on your journey through life, to expand and double the joy and laughter, and to lighten the sorrow.

In this world of instant email, IM and other forms of communication, constant contact and even intimate physical contact is mistaken for true intimacy. The art of letter writing is threatened, but perhaps blog entries where privacy can be a matter of choice have transformed the letter. To share this kind of love letter, is a generous and gentle reminder to look around and see what we have or what we might be missing.

Thanks so much for sharing.

Funny that you bundle loneliness and boredom together. I've never been bored, but I've often been lonely. Even though, much like you, I've been pretty much self-contained for most of my life, still I've not gone without the longing for companionship, for a shared history with -- not a writer or a character in a book or movie, but with someone with whom I can interact in real time. I was feeling that particularly pointedly tonight when I ran across your journal entry. Funny how it made me feel both less lonely and more so.

Loneliness hurts. And it can drive a person to do things they aren't proud of, just to find some kind of false relief. It's hard to fight off such an urge, when the only person around to reason with you is yourself.

I am a lonely person. I have been for a long time, though I don't let it define me. Certainly, I often experience joy, relief, companionship and love. And I am content to continue living, as I find it preferable to the alternative. But I like loneliness permeates my being. I see so much value in connecting with a person, truly and honestly connecting with them. And I've done this with a few close friends who are dear to me. But what of others out there whom I don't know? How many of them see little value in truly connecting with another person? And who among them feels the debilitating loneliness that I feel? If I reached out to them, would they shy away or rebuke me? Have them found a way to live, so that they don't need me or anyone for that matter?

I need people. And I want people. I don't want to trade loneliness for apathy. I don't want to let it defeat me. When a person stops yearning, do they become numb to the pain? I see many people bury themselves in something - work, casual sex, bullying, drugs - just to put an extra layer of matter between them and whatever they're afraid to try to deal with.

I admit that I'm often guilty of focusing on my own loneliness far too much. I really want to be of help to other people, to make a difference and to lend a helping hand. But often times, something holds me back. It's hard to even want to try, because with loneliness comes a feeling of social and emotional failure and this erodes one's confidence. I know this first hand. Why reach out when it's hard enough just to help yourself?

I mull over all of these thoughts quite often. I look for motivation, watching for anything tangible that I am able to grasp. I think, I read and I learn. I take baby steps towards something resembling progress, even if it always appears blurry and I'm unable to gauge it's distance from me. I continue on every day. And I wrestle with my own loneliness. And once I gain the upper hand, I see the loneliness that the rest of the world is wrestling with and I wonder what I could do, just to weaken it a little bit and imbue others instead with happiness and inspiration.

I guess there's little point to my response, other than to think out loud. I've never responded to one of your blogs before, Mr. Ebert. But I've been reading your work since I was a kid. I've long been a fan of film criticism and I admire you and your work. Now that I know you well as a critic, it's nice to get to know you as a man. I will look forward to your next blog entry.

If anyone would like to know what song, to me, sums up loneliness and it's painful catharsis, here it is -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN5dv3ekQag
Yoshihisa Hirano and Hideki Taniuchi - Kodoku (Solitude)

I appreciate this post quite a bit. I grew up an only child, and an only grandchild on both sides until I was 16. We also lived about 600 miles away from one set of family for most of life. I've usually been alone, but in a way, always felt more comfortable that way. I've always been very sociable and surrounded by friends, but I find solace solo. In fact, I got to tour Italy, Greece, and Turkey over the summer and some of the best days were on my own...walking around Florence, Rome, Venice etc without a care in the world. It's amazing how that carefree nature is easily replaced by the desire to share that experience.

In fact, the older I get, the more I find myself on the fence about whether I really enjoy my solo time or if I'm missing out on something more. I actually find that I hope to find myself coming to terms having my personal space violated by a wife and a couple of kids in the near future. What used to be a nightmare for me becomes more of a goal, a dream.

It's this thing setting on you chest all the time, no matter where you go and what ever you do. What is this? Where does it come from? Why some times I feel like I need it? Why is it when I come home and find it empty I feel good? Why is it when the lights turn on in the movie theater I feel like I'm back to some place I don't belong? Why my friends call and I don't answer?
Do I enjoy solitude? Yes! But how much is too much? Can I go through life alone? Do I want to?

"Simply be." I always say that to myself, and I always did enjoy this feeling. These small moments in life that I utterly enjoy, setting in the car waiting for it to heat up while it's cold out side, the look on my mother's face when she sees me, walking alone in a place where nobody knows me. It's like, now, for these few minutes, I'm alright.

I grew up in a very loving and sharing home, but that's life I guess. The question is, am I wasting my life like this? Or is this my way of living it?

Thanks for this wonderful piece, Mr. Ebert, I've been reading you articles for years, your writings mean a lot to mean, but for some reason this is my first comment ever!
Best wishes to you and Chaz. I hope you enjoy the new Criterion collection Blu-ray of the Night of the Hunter, looks beautiful.

Man, Roger. How can explain my appreciation for this piece without divulging into a boring story about my most lonely moments?

I remember my first half-assed attempt in moving away from home. I was attending a community college for a semester about 100 miles away from where I grew up, and I lived in an apartment on a vineyard my grandfather owns.

My classes were from Monday to Thursday, and every Thursday night I'd return to my hometown. Returning to my hometown didn't make me feel any better about anything, but I kept going back every Thursday after class.

I somehow find I'm most lonely when I'm surrounded by people whose company I should be enjoying. The vineyard had my family, and my hometown had a few remaining friends who hadn't moved to go to college.

I think about a lot of things, in a lot of different ways. It's how I stave off a sense of boredom. The time I am alone is amongst the greatest treasures I have. I need to try to understand what happened in the day. I end up having inner dialogues that are somewhat stale and overused, but they keep repeating themselves. "Did I mean to say that?" "Why did she say that, when she has said something else before?" "Why can't I fall asleep?"

Whenever I'm in a state of deep thought, and an entry such as this one captures my attention, I feel inclined to let my opinions be known. It's weird, I say things on the internet that I would normally save for the closest of companions. Is it because I don't feel threatened by stating something I feel so passionate about? Maybe. I just think that it helps to funnel out the things that can drown a mind in a fog.

I'm not the best at communicating to people I don't know, but I know myself. Whenever I'm typing something, it's my inner dialogue. For this reason, it feels good to let others in on how my mind works, and the results therein. If you're reading what I say, you'll know that that's what I feel. There's comfort in that.

As far as loneliness goes, it depends upon one factor. If I'm alone, is it because I want to be? If the answer is no, it's the only time I feel lonely.

In my own life, I have come to understand that it is the very experience of an extended period of intense lonliness that teaches us to love without neediness, without fear.

It isn't until we have experienced profound emptiness -- when the ceaseless ticking of a clock can seem like the cruelest torture -- and come out on the other side, that we discover we can be happy and perfectly content to be alone.

It is only after we discover that part of ourselves that we can be confident our choice of a lover or spouse is not influenced by our fear of lonliness.

Of course, that period for me occurred before the advent of the Internet. I wonder if the sense of isolation I experienced and benefitted from is still possible in an age of instant messaging, micro-blogging and ubiquitous communication.

As long as I can remember, I've always been afraid of being alone. When I was a child, I remember I used to believe that I would end up like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man or Burgess Meredith in that Twilight Zone episode. A little over a decade of therapy/Zoloft/Lexapro later and I find that I still fear being alone, much is the reason why I made the decision to go to a local (by local, I mean one that's in driving distance) University instead of one that more suited my career aspirations. My friends, while mostly good-natured and generally good people, are friends of habit, as nearly all of the ones I still see are from the same high school that I graduated from.

At times I wonder what will happen to me, will I get married (hell, will I still be a virgin), will I just live in my town for the rest of my life, will I ever lose interest in film?
I don't have the answers to any of these questions, no one can. To be honest, I try to ignore them, filling that void of uncertainty with video games and my movie ideas. But I still know that one day those questions will be answered, and I don't want that day to be like the ones I spend now.

It was those famous words you mentioned at the end of your entry Mr. Ebert, "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got, till it's gone?" that have illuminated something I forget was true: all of our time is finite.

With a lot of my true friends either gone or leaving for greener pastures (by greener pastures I mean other colleges or the Marines...actually scratch that last one, I still don't know what the hell he was thinking), as well as the simple fact that I will no longer be a teenager in 6 months time; I'm beginning to give a lot more thought to my future, a lot more than before at least.

I'd like to thank you Mr. Ebert, for your insight, your always welcome critiques over the years, and now your thought-provoking entry that reminded me that what I accept as a daily routine doesn't have to be set in stone, nor will it ever truly stay set in stone.

And with that, I bid you good day/night sir (and best wishes to your wife!).

In my own life, I have come to understand that it is the very experience of an extended period of intense lonliness that teaches us to love without neediness, without fear.

It isn't until we have experienced profound emptiness -- when the ceaseless ticking of a clock can seem like the cruelest torture -- and come out on the other side, that we discover we can be happy and perfectly content to be alone.

It is only after we discover that part of ourselves that we can be confident that our choice of a lover or spouse is not influenced by our fear of lonliness.

Of course, that period for me occurred before the advent of the Internet. I wonder if the sense of isolation I experienced and benefitted from is still possible in an age of instant messaging, micro-blogging and ubiquitous communication.

Beautiful observations, Roger.

I find that I can be perfectely happy all by myself, because (much like you) I don't get bored easily. I have plenty of things to occupy my mind with and if I feel like being among people, I can sit in a cafe or go to the movies.

But, strangely, I do get lonely when I talk to other people and they tell me about their parties on weekends, or trips to the mall. That's when I feel like I might be missing out on something and a sudden sadness rushes in. That's why I keep to myself usually. I love my friends, but I've known them for years and most of them live far away. Making new friends is extremely difficult for me, so I'm trying not to think about the things I'm missing and instead, turn to the wise philosopher Aristotle:

"Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient"

This is the saddest, loneliest night of my life. I just lost a dear family member. Restless and lonely, I dropped by your blog to keep me company. And find you just now wrote about loneliness. Twilight Time by The Three Suns will always be how I remember this night. Thank you for such sad, sweet comfort.

Best wishes and I am glad that dear Chaz is well. The appendix always chooses a sudden, random time to let us know of its existence, doesn't it? Please remind her not to lift anything heavier than a glass of water for the next 4 to 6 weeks.

Ebert: Oh dear. I look up now and see your photo of the C-U S&S blown up very large and framed, and I realize the trees are bare of leaves.

I'm just glad you're quoting Meyer. You had me at hello with that. I bet our favorite boat bum wouldn't have nice to things to say about the internet. And I'm sure Meyer would argue it with him even if it was just to play devil's advocate and prod a different point of view. Whichever side you come down on, it would be a conversation that would go to interesting places. We'll just have to make due here without the two of them.

I don't think loneliness is something you just feel or don't feel. It comes in degrees. The main reason I wish I would've gone to college isn't for a degree or a path to a higher paying job, it's because I'd like to be in a setting where discussions about literature or philosophy are a necessity. An ex-girlfriend of mine graduated from Yale and she told me, "it's a curious person's paradise". I almost never feel lonely, but I sure as hell felt it then. Day to day I talk to alot of people, but I sometimes get lonely for particular types of conversations and viewpoints. Your blog is one of many places I can go to remedy that.

Wonderful Words, Woger.
I am sorry. My wife has repeatedly told me not to joke with people who don't know me (especially since my jokes are so often pathetically lame), but my impulse to joke is like a bully that sometimes shoves the better angels of my nature aside. Maybe it's the presence of that bully that keeps me from feeling lonely.
Anyway your descriptions of contentment in cafes and on solitary walks is right on target. As is your depiction of those hours alone at home when you were a child. So very familiar.
I wish you and Chaz the very best and hope that she may return very soon to your happy home.

Did you intentionally publish this at 11:11?

Does the lonely number "1" symbolise each isolated reader of this blog?

Did you position the four "1"s to remind us that despite the fact that we come here to extend our consciousnesses, to fill that void of loneliness, we nevetherless do so together and thus - paradoxically - are never alone?

Ebert: Serendipity?

(*Cue Twilight Zone theme*)

"... They can create a safe private world. They can create a reality that affirms their values. They can stand for something. They can find someone to laugh with, and confide in. Someone to hold them when they need to be held."

Nicely stating quite a few of the many reasons why I personally think romantic love is quite possibly/probably the most fulfilling and meaningful kind of love one can have, if lucky enough.

This blog touched me quite a lot. I'll admit to being the subject of bullying throughout most of my life - from about the age of 6 or 7 to 15 or so - and it's really shaped the way I view the world. Nowadays I have a great group of friends, yet when a slight joke is made at my expense, I get hugely offended and upset. Even when nothing is meant by it, and it's just typical friendly banter, it takes me back to the days when I was told I was worthless, even by people I considered to be my friends. Being bullied in school is always terrible because the authority figures never seem to have a goddamn clue how to deal with it - you hear all the usual things, "ignore him" "bully him back", and the reasoning for it, "they're bullied themselves" and whatnot, but none of it changes anything. There's still someone who has the power to make you feel like crap whenever they want, and it feels like no-one really cares.

When I started Secondary School, at the age of 11, I found it got even worse. Luckily, this was around the time the Internet was really taking off, and I logged on and started posting on forums, going on things like Habbo Hotel, getting MSN Messenger, and it was good. I found a lot of friends my age. But there are certain places where...I started posting on this one forum, and it started again. The Internet, where I turned to for comfort, had become the worst place. It was on the Internet where I was told I would always be a failure, always be terrible, not because of anything I did or was to do, just because of...who I was. Just because I was Tom Bown, I was doomed to be a pathetic sadsack loser forever. That stands as the worst thing anyone's ever said to me still.

I don't know that this comment has a point as such, or whether I'm just venting. It's nice to see a post that understands loneliness so well, even if you've never particularly felt it yourself. I worry about myself in that I'm very quick to blame being bullied for pretty much all of my issues. Whether it is responsible for them or not, I know I shouldn't keep holding onto that as an excuse. One of your reviews that I remember very well, Roger, is your piece on "Welcome to the Dollhouse", in which you admit you still remember the names and faces of every single person who bullied you as a child. I'm the same, and I don't think they'll ever be erased from my mind. I wish I could forgive them for what they did - realistically, looking back, most of them were too stupid to really understand, only a few were actually genuinely malicious - but maybe I'm just not old enough, or mature enough, yet.

I'm still lonely sometimes, mostly due to lack of female attention, but for the most part I have a life I'm happy with. Last weekend, I went down with my friends to the MCM Expo (London's version of a Comic-Con, basically) as we had a table and stuff to sell. I knew our website had a fanbase, but we were all completely overwhelmed. We had massive queues, and I signed untold amounts of posters, books, and even faces. On the train on the way back, with significantly less than we took, I had a strange moment of clarity while thinking over the few days I'd just experienced, and realised I was loved and appreciated for something I do. It was the strongest I've ever felt that, and I'm not embarrassed to say I welled up pretty bad right there. I wonder how much longer I'll let bullying shape my life, shape my thoughts and feelings on experiences, and shape who I am. I definitely know I'd be letting myself down if I let them win, years after I've ever seen any of them.

Thank you for writing this, Roger. You may sometimes feel like you have no help to offer people, but just being around, writing, inspiring, is enough.

Ebert: Bullies must be miserable all the time, driven to find victims so they can prove to themselves, over and over again, that they themselves are not worthless.

Now that Jim Barg has mentioned London I'll jump in. I'm a Texan studying for a master's in English in London, on a one-year program. Then back to the States. I can testify that enormous cities have a way of making you feel isolated, because at some point the sheer size makes it difficult to make real connections.

On the Tube, for instance, I recently sat next to a woman reading a book ("Then We Came to the End," Joshua Ferris) I had read too. I felt tempted to ask her, "What do you think about it?" and get a little discussion going. But I didn't. And a professor later told me I'd made the right decision: "The Tube is everyone's alone time. It brings so many people together, so that they can turn inwards and focus on themselves. Never talk to strangers on the Tube. You're just interrupting."

I feel alone but not lonely. There's a balance. I haven't had a conversation since 4:45 pm yesterday, so 18 hours, but I've got a sort of zen-like peace going on. In a moment, I'll climb out of bed, take my books to the library over in Bloomsbury, print the boarding passes for my flight to Morocco on Sunday, and visit my favorite hole-in-the-wall cafe for lunch. My oldest friend has just written me an email and she's going through tough times so I'll write back. Then I'll probably listen to Beethoven and spend Saturday night with my flatmates.

Your observation that maybe loneliness only happens when you know what you're missing, is very interesting. But you know what: I hope that that is made clear to me some day. It means something has gone right.

It is that anonymous mass of lonely people out there (or those that can elegantly capture it, as you just did) that can help me feel the single greatest commodity known to any man... hope. Without it, I am a total mess. When I have it, I feel like it is all worth it.

That is the power of a great book, a great film, a great song or a great blog -- it can propel you to the next moment.

Thanks Roger.
Best wishes to Chaz.

Roger, this is off topic (unless you figure that these guys are pretty lonely these days), but I thought you'd like to see this:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/arkansas-supreme-court-orders-new.html

The Arkansas Supreme Court orders a new hearing in the case depicted in the documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills."

"While there is a significant dispute in this case as to the legal effects of the DNA test results, it is undisputed that the results conclusively excluded Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley as the source of the DNA evidence tested," wrote the court.

Ebert: Essentially found guilty because they wore black and listened to heavy metal, and hysterical fundamentalists assumed they were Satanists. The killer is clearly pointed to in the two documentaries.

Great writing, as ever.

I think the focus on oneself (the flight from tradition, from a sense of history and future, from a sense of context and culture) and an emphasis on the "here-and-now" is making us more stimulated than ever, but unrelated to others in any meaningful way, and hence lonely.

Ironically, the ways which we are using to connect to each other again, are isolating us more, because we are connecting to carefully constructed *versions* of others, just like we are presenting a rather cool version of ourselves (no warts, no flaws).

Bombarded with images and choreographed sequences on TV and in films, we are, more and more, expecting an unrealistic level of perfection in others, and not finding it, we reject them too easily.

It is a rather strange situation of wanting love at all costs, of being accepted for what one is, but not willing to accept others at all because they are not like me.

Intolerant loneliness is the worst of all, I think.

Sometimes I need time alone to think. During those times, the internet hurts the process, as do radio and television. I could listen to the radio all day long, and sometimes I do, but it can keep me from thinking. When I need to begin and end a complete thought, I do it in silence. Your description of walking is a good one. Washing dishes can serve the same purpose, believe it or not. Memories: the story "Harrison Bergeron," by Vonnegut; and the idea of washing the baby Buddha, that a friend referred to in a discussion of walking meditation.

I really needed to read this this morning.

In many ways, I am lonely - I want a partner, a mate - but I loved what you said when you said you were never bored. It was a startling statement, for some reason, and I had to stop reading for a second and look at my own life and consider that question for myself. Am I ever bored? I honestly cannot remember the last time I was ever bored. I have been sad, lonely, this past year I have been grieving a loss, but bored? I am not sure I even know what that feels like. I am very glad of that. I have friends who do not know what to do with themselves when they are left alone. They have forgotten how to fill up the time with their own interests. A Saturday night by themselves? They aren't sure what to do with that. That's fine: Solitude in many ways is a muscle. You have to exercise your taste for it.

From when I was a small child, I had an active fantasy life, a whole world of make-believe - and a lot of that came from the books I read and the movies I watched. I could spend hours by myself, pretending I was in BUGSY MALONE, for example - I would try to make a spit-curl like Jodie Foster had, using hair-gel from the cabinet - with dubious results. Or I could spend a lot of time writing down observations in a notebook as though I were HARRIET THE SPY. I was someone who always needed a lot of solitude, for my own equilibrium. I am still that way.

I wonder about boredom now, after reading your beautiful post, and where it comes from. I wonder why I have never been bored.

I am glad to hear Chaz is okay. It is sobering when you contemplate something being taken away from you.

Thanks again, Mr. Ebert. This is something that I needed to hear today.

I enjoyed this very much. I too love to walk by myself, find a place to sit alone and drink coffee and read, and yet I spend a lot of time here on the internet . . . . you've given me much to think about . . . . glad Chaz is well.

Diana

I wasn't old enough to para-socially disagree with you when you had a voice. My parents raised me on films. My father came from a poor country were picture-houses were a weekend staple. Because of cultural disproportions, films were his idea of quality time.

With my depression and insomnia, I turned to books and film to schedule away the demons for years, which, otherwise, would be sickening.

I didn't know what all the fuss was over your two cents until I stumbled upon your blog and saw you were unimpressed by The Lord Of The Rings. I wanted to buy you a drink. I learned you left that behind you. I read of a man who also didn't sleep. I learned you didn't have the balls to say you don't like religion because you were conditioned by it. You were also raised Catholic. I fascinated over your hoarding of books to furnish a room. I was relived of guilt by company. I routinely refreshed your homepage every Wednesday night for years. Still do. Among many things I can recall, you wrote of Hitchens recently, fracturing my pathos with glee that your names were both on the same page. But, most pertinently, I took notice to how you placed emphasis on story, the same vague and stubborn maxim I couldn't yet relay in pithy aphorisms to my teachers when I tried to tell them so-and-so was inconsistent and a shoddy writer.

Mr. Ebert, I once secretly wanted to be a writer. A newsman too, perhaps to preserve my parents' respect, and then maybe dabble into scripts if I were successful. I once didn't have the courage to tell anyone I really wanted to direct. I gained some sobered maturity from synthesizing what you thought was faulty of particular films. My trepidation quelled steadily by your insight. I enrolled in film classes toward the end of high school. "I can put story first," I learned to tell myself as I hope to head toward film school after undergrad. You have almost been a mentor. My Emerson. And though I may never meet you, you seem to be considerately aware of me.

I am now twenty years old.

PS It's 5AM in California, and I am not just waking up.

Another wonderful post, Roger. I've never commented on your blog, nor often on anyone else's for that matter, but have read your work for many years and often wished I knew you personally.

You don't know me, but we have likely crossed paths. I'm a year younger than you, went to the University of Illinois from 1961 to 1967 (as a music composition student), hung out at the student bars at Sixth Street and Green -- the Capitol, House of Chin, and the Wigwam -- also the Turks Head coffee house and Steak and Shake of which you've written, went to movies at the Illini theater, loved living in Urbana, can relate strongly to experiences you tell from your youth, and have been reading your movie reviews and now your personal blog since they first began to appear on the internet.

I love reading whatever you have to say, even when I disagree with you, and even when I have no intention of seeing movies you review. As a writer and editor myself, I value your workmanship. You write so glibly, in a way that reflects flashes of insight sometimes in almost every sentence. Many is the time I've exclaimed to myself, "I wish I'd said that," or have cut and pasted one of your well-crafted sentences or paragraphs to a commonplace notebook.

You must be one of the most widely read writers on the planet. So no, as long as you continue to produce as voluminously and elegantly as you have, you will never be alone, as you will be accompanied by a vast army of faithful and appreciative readers.

Ebert: The Wigwam made a pretty damn good pizza. And remember the fish sandwiches at the pool hall next to the Turk's Head? And the Book Nook downstairsb>

I think loneliness is the default setting for people. It's just a sense I get everywhere I look, and my favorite films tend to be the ones that explore this concept, or at least convey it. I don't find it depressing; I find it comforting.

In my life I have a wife and child, both of whom I love deeply. I have a girlfriend on the side (with the wife's blessing), who I also care for. I have editors I love working with, and readers. Employees and customers at my small business. Close, close friends and friends who aren't so close but still lovely. Regular acquaintances at the local businesses that I enjoy seeing. On-line friends. Writers and artists whose work I know so well that they feel like friends. Still I feel lonely. Constantly. There's never not a day where I don't feel like I'm ultimately in this by myself, and everyone else is, and all we can offer is a respite. A warm shelter from the snowstorm. Comforting smoke signals from another island.

Actually, the only time I don't really feel lonely is when I'm alone, if that makes sense.

I've been both lonely and self-contained all my life. I wish for companionship, but I'm also perfectly happy by myself. I can spend a happy Saturday working in the yard, or exploring the Indiana countryside in my car, or writing my blog. Yet it seems like these things would all be enhanced if a companion came along for the ride, or at least were there to hear of my adventures.

I feel the most lonely after writing something personal like this and sending it out into the ether where strangers may read it.

This reminds me of the moment in my favorite movie, "Wings of Desire," when the Bruno Ganz character, the angel, decides to fall to earth and connect with the people he has been next to, but not among.

There is an exile that is self-imposed. Some are simply afraid, not so much afraid of their own safety, but of failure. Some have said things with best of intentions or, at least without malice in their heart, that ended up causing hurt or sadness or pain in others. Misunderstandings, mistakes, moments of misdirected anger or upset, or just lack of polished social skills. Then, feeling guilt or shame for what has occurred, and tremendous sadness over losing a friend or companion or lover, vow to never do that again.

The only sure-fire way to never do that again, in some people's minds, is to withdraw and refrain entirely. Never speak up at events, never make true friends, never seek new relationships, out of fear that you will only err again and lose them again.

It is tough to forgive oneself for prior mistakes. In a way, guilt is a good thing, for only habitual criminals and psychopaths do not feel guilt over what they've done. But guilt, kept in the dark where it can fester and spoil, isolates one from society.

Folks look at the lonely and say "oh, that poor person". Pity may not be what that person needs. People may say "oh, let's invite that person to lunch". Companionship may not be what that person needs.

What that person may need is forgiveness.

Not really the same case with me Roger. I've simply visited this site on a regular basis for many years and once the blog came out, well, there was usually something interesting in it. What I can't understand is why I'm often so compelled to send a comment and give my opinion; very, very often I experience a guilt trip over doing so (to the tune of: now, why did I do that?).
Asides from the content, what I've always enjoyed here is the good nature of the comments despite the many touchy subjects you often bring up, in contrast, those of my local newspapaer (much like in youtube) leave me depressed: people insulting their politicians, the clergy, one another, it's like they don't get do so enough in real life so the anonimity of the internet will have to do.

For me, though you have written many many terrific blog entries (a few I still want to respond to that are getting old!), this is possibly the best I have ever read. Relevant, true, and with great depth. Thank you, Roger!

Ebert, that was beautiful. You made a home for me when you created this blog. I don't come here seeking companionship. I come to be inspired.

That was brilliant Roger! I'm an artist (painter, etc.) and I am never bored either. I have always described myself as self-contained, I liked reading that. I don't know that I have ever been lonely. I had a marriage to an alcoholic who was mainly there for himself, not my son or me. I sit on the internet or paint in my studio and am really happy. I'm a hermit/loner when I create and I create all the time. I do have a need to be social (but not very often) and I have a network of friends I see occasionally and we get together and celebrate being alive, but I celebrate being alive everyday anyway. I think I'm like this because I was close to death twice when I was 20, saw the light and all that jazz (that was on tv last night). I made up my mind to take everyday slowly and appreciate everything from the sky to the dirt.. So here I am. I have happily accepted myself as being alone. Thanks for the beautiful prose!

This was so lovely. Thank you.

I was listening to the Beatles the other day. "All the lonely people, where do they all belong?" Elenore Rigby, what a beautiful ode to those that live in isolation.

As you pointed out, I think I've been at my most content during periods of extensive traveling, while being completely alone. Life is being lived mostly in the moment. Every day is a new adventure. The potential of new experiences and relationships keep every day alive with possibility. It reminds me of being very young, where there was a spontaneous joy in everyday experience. Traveling alone can be rich with social contact even if it is fleeting. I think also there is a lack of fear of what tomorrow will bring.

In contrast, I've been at my loneliest being stuck in a stagnant daily routine devoid of stimulating interactions. After months and years, anxiety and quiet desperation sets in and after that a numbing resignation that life itself and all its possibilities are beyond my reach.

Having experienced both places, I realize that one escapes loneliness through a sense of belonging. We are truly social creatures and while we may go through periods of contentment in solitude. We never sever our connections with others. Even the sadhu hermit eventually comes down off the mountain.

Here on the internet,there is a kind of social redemption. I belong to this blog of yours. Put in my 2 cents, whether you care or not. Its my perception and brings with it a certain distant sense of community. Its funny too, I often tell friends about your blog and most aren't interested. Oh well, it makes me feel as though I am in an exclusive community with you and my fellow contributors.

Um, I'm not so certain.

I think people have to self-identify as lonely to be lonely, said Mr. Lonesome. I mean, maybe most of Internet Nation is lonely, but I certainly don't think they believe themselves to be.

I think the internet is driven more by anger and by the natural instinct to lash out at the overwhelming crush of marketing and public relations and celebri-politico spin. We open our e-mail boxes to get instant info from an actual friend - virtual or otherwise, our interest in their on-goings define them as our friend - and we are beat about the eyes with too much we don't have any interest in.

Sarah Palin.

The popularity of 3-D.

Who called who an expletive.

Does James Franco sleep with other men.

INCEPTION is the greatest movie ever.

Lady GaGa.

Lindsey Lohan and a dozen Kardashians.

New Jersey.

The latest techno doo-hickey no one needs but everyone is buying.

Everybody's conservative. If you're not, they're all laughing at you.

Megamind, Megamind, Megamind, Megamind.

Analysis that's unmeasured. Information that is nonfactual. Salesmanship unfettered.

And, our reaction is, "What? That isn't so! That's not my interpretation. Your mother..."

It's not from loneliness. It's from the desire to have the right answer regarding the ways of the world. The desire to persuade others. It's the same motivation of any writer, no matter what his tool.

Hi Roger - beautiful piece as ever. I am single and apart from sporadic relationships, always have been, It's through choice. I have two daughters that I am close to and I would live with them both still if I could.

I love the internet - but I don't think it's because I'm lonely. I comment whenever I feel moved to do so on blogs and articles that I have read. It's not that I have nothing else to do - it's just that that's what I happen to be doing at the time. The net is great growing living breathing seething mass of conversation enveloping the world. Some of it is brainless, some of it is brilliant, some of it is as mean and cowardly as anything I can ever imagine, some of it is so kind and lovely that 'saltwater wells in my eyes'.

I very occasionally feel lonesome (I like that word better than lonely - it's more poetic) but I feel comfortable in my own little world and have no real wish to change that.

I have said for many years that my relationship to my creativity is my marriage. I go through all the same stages that I observed my married friends go through - elation with a new project, despair that things never work out the way you planned, anger at the time demanded of you, trapped by the level of commitment required.

Before going to college, I watched Taxi Driver for the first time and it completely flew right over my head. Watching it a few years later after I had spent six months alone in an apartment not talking to anyone, I got it. The film works so well (in many ways, but also as) a case study for loneliness and depression that they could show it in high school health class. I especially admire the way the film demonstrated Travis becoming so obsessed with physical fitness, yet utterly unconcerned with food and sleep. I used to be one of those lonely people on the internet, but the practice of trying to reach out for others was so fruitless that I was far better off engaging in any other activity.

Say what you will about video games, but as far as a battler against loneliness and boredom, they cannot be beat. They constantly track accomplishments and statistics and repeatedly let you know that you are making an impact in your own personal way. There's one game series, called Harvest Moon, in which you play a farmer who raises crops, buys livestock, befriends the townspeople, and can eventually get married. Every in-game day is wide open and the routine one develops is entirely up to the player. Hours go by before you notice. And that's all you do. There's no winning or losing, just personal accomplishments... that don't exist in the real world.

Functional alienation. It is, for whatever reason, a defining factor of living a life - at least in human form. We are complete as individual packets of guts and dreams, and we know that, and that's where we're going and that's where we came from.

And yet, as Paul Simon wrote, "you take two bodies and twirl them into one / their hearts and their bones, they won't come undone"... It is also a defining factor of living a life (at least in most cases) that you aren't the only one doing it, and get to wondering how everyone else is coming along.

So are we fighting nature when we seek to define a life as lived by two or more? Would we be happier if we more fully embraced our stark individuality? How can one "go against" nature when all things are natural?

Y'know, I don't really get that lonely, myself. Except sometimes when I witness a book, movie, or song about someone else being alone.

Ebert: I experience a slight dislocation when I realize how few of you have ever listened in on a party line, or even know what one is.

The party line was a pre-echo of social networking, which disappeared for a long time and is only now being re-invented. On the Internet, of course.

I have to say that you might be one of the most eloquent writers I have ever read. When we started reading "Media Reviews" at the small town library that I work at in order to be a better "Patron Advocate"(whatever that means) I quickly strayed unto your blog and found things that were funny, things that were sad, a few things infuriating, but everything profound.

In the past year, you have inspired me to look deeper into movies and to ask more of filmmakers. If they want $8.55 plus popcorn and snacks they had better be delivering more than dimly lit, 3D explosions, witty one liners, and gratuitous sex and violence. Since acting is my intended profession, it also has made me work harder to give my audience something better than amateur hour. For that, I thank you.

But you've also inspired me to get off this infernal internet. I didn’t realize how much time I spent on face book, until you pointed out how easily it consumes time. I used to be an avid reader - now I spend two hours at a time writing short little one liners on Facebook stati.

I have to agree with you that the internet perpetuates loneliness. In my history of modern drama class, one of the first things we discussed was "The society of Spectacle" by Guy Duebord. He wrote that society uses technology to separate itself from the rest of humanity so that we are always one step away from the actual thing we comment on. There is always a separation between people, and technology greases the wheels of that separation. He was writing in the 60's. Certainly with face book we have almost stopped social interaction, but my generation also rarely speaks on the telephone with each other, preferring text and email to actual conversation. When we get together, things get awkward. Oh we'll talk for hours about our interests, but half the time it’s still in the language we use on the web (Noob, L337 etc.). I find that ultimately sad. I truly do. And maybe subconsciously, that's why we're lonely. We're not actually having conversations, or doing things anymore. We're in our own virtual worlds like the people in "Fahrenheit 451". Not really noticing how beautiful the world is, just watching the White Clown while doing a million different things.
Or maybe we're just the huge childlike people in "Wall-E", not noticing anything until someone points it out. I had that moment when I walked out of my library and was greeted with a small flurry. Actually seeing one for the first time, instead of just seeing an inconvenience, I exclaimed “It’s snowing!” Three or four people passed without noticing because they had their ear buds in, and they were texting like mad.

I think we’ve isolated ourselves Mr. Ebert. I truly do. I understand the internet being there for people who may not be able to get out and about, but the majority of us on the internet (myself included) can. We put ourselves in self enforced exile because we can, because it's easy and convienient. Because life is hard. As a result, we start feeling lonely. And we feel lonely because we are a step away from solitary confinement. It's a sad state of affairs for us twenty -two year olds, and a sad precedent for the future.

I'm so glad your Chaz came home. Mine did not and the hardest reminder is during a half-waking moment in the night when I hear the clink of a glass in the kitchen, or feel a presence settle gently back into the bed, then realize these perceptions are just a yearning echo.

This is funny.. many times (most times) I have asked myself why do I write posts to this blog (in truth, there are two blogs I post to, and the other is very small in comparison and specific to something I am currently engaged in: IOW, I post there to learn practical application.. here, its for other reasons).

I have distilled some reasons:

- no offense, but I am not a "fan" of yours, though I do read your reviews, so I cant say (like probably most here) that i post simply to "communicate" with the "great Roger Ebert".. though I think I have likely imagined something here

- usually my posts attempt to directly engage what someone else has posted. so, in that sense, I am posting to learn something, or understand something. the phenomenon of just randomly tossing out opinions into internet oblivion without attempting to engage someone else directly is lost on me.

- the argument has been made that, for "social technology" to appear smart, humans must become dumber. this may be witnessed in such forums as this. for, in terms of communication with other minds, in comparison with non-electronic forms of communication, it feels about as rewarding as attempting to push a peanut up a hill with your nose. still, this doesnt mean that, given the mores of this society, people will not jump with both feet onto the bandwagon, just because it's there. iow, there may be some emperor's clothing involved.. novelty.

But it is funny.. I was thinking this past week (as I have thought before) -- Roger Ebert does this because of a terrible illness.. wtf am I doing this for?

- Habit? There may be a soothing ritual about it (as I say though, this is really the only forum I have used to this extent. I even canceled my facebook account because, despite all the friends and acquaintances (yes, they were real flesh and blood friends, not just "facebook friends") I found the inanity of socializing through software overwhelming.)

- Bad habit? I think when "wth am I doing this again for" crosses your mind it is time to at least give it a break. And, perhaps this is really my only indulgence re forum posting I allow myself to do a little more. And definitely if you do something because you are bored - iow: you associate your action with boredom, iow: you are bored with doing the thing you do when you are bored: move on or die.

Roger Ebert wrote: Perhaps I wasn't lonely before because I didn't have it, so it couldn't be gone.

I am not sure what "it" you may be referring to - you mean, love? I think growing up in a healthy, happy, stable environment welcomed you to a world that enabled you to be alone knowing that you could find something good to be apart of when you decided you wanted to be not alone. There is a freedom there. You were alone by choice then, not because you were sheltering yourself from fighting or tension or, much much worse - being ignored. Because you were born into that environment, it is as natural to you as your native language. Now, with your wife, you opted to attach a significant part of yourself to a transient being. That was a foolish thing to do, as you are beginning to realize. For you will never be totally secure again, as you were.

But, and it's a valid question, why did I take the time to write this out and post it? Likely I have covered it in the reasons above. Are these reasons enough to warrant continuing. I think not. I think to this point I realize this is generally not the place for a discussion, just countless monologues, though some are more interesting than others. And I recall SM Rana's posts on reincarnation. Still, it is so tempting and easy and habit-forming....

And lets not forget: people who have an avataristic existence are engaged in an alter-ego, to at least some extent; though it may be very subtle it is still important enough to validate creating the avatar. These anonymous forums will always be virtual realities.

Best to you and yours,
Scott

The internet contradiction: everyone connected to each other in their own little rooms.

Maybe college students texting away as they walk between and home from classes are as calm and happy as I was. But I don't know how I'd ever have written an essay or a poem without those soothing quiet and blissfully uninterrupted walks. I also remember looking forward to driving anywhere for the uninterrupted time and the music.

Also, the key thing to me of your blog posts is the sustained thought. Not a fleeting reaction to a fleeting political development. They seem more akin to long form writing than what I think of as a blog.

Today you made me excited than usual to walk my dog around town in the rain...

Dear Roger Ebert,

I know how much mail you must receive and that it would be literally impossible to answer every one; you might not even see this.

About loneliness--wonderful article. If I was to define it in one sentence it would be the feeling that no one loves you or cares that you are in the world; also, having no one to tell anything to--the good things and the bad things and all of life in between.

But here's what's odd. The picture of the man on the beach was used to illustrate my poem Getting It Off My Chest on a blog called Sedulia's Quotations, operating out of San Francisco. Sedulia Scott found it in the London Review of Books, when it was quoted by the great Alan Bennett in his Diary. This is the poem:

I'm bruised inside
from the
punches I've pulled.

Bennett observed that he "would have liked to have written that", but had "no idea" who I was (join the club, though I sent him a copy of my first book all of ten years ago).

Now here's what even odder. The colour pic of the old man sitting on the bench: that's Salthill promenade, with Galway Bay and the Burren in the distance. It is ten minutes' walk from where I live. It seems extraordinary to me that you or your picture editor had access to this photo. I wonder who took it.

I have been reading your books for years, and I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to know that, in spite of everything, you prevail. You can't keep a good man down, as Bukowski/Chinaski might have put it. Right, Rick Talbot?

All good wishes,

Kevin Whelan

Ebert: A small, indeed microscopic world. I found all the art by the simple means of googling "lonely."

I know what it is like to feel lonely. I am a 51 year old gay man who is manic-depressive. My ex-lover, now my best friend, lives two hours away. I haven't made a lot of friends where I live now because there are a lot of ghosts of those I knew who died in the AIDS epidemic. Yet, there are some times when I am by myself that I wouldn't trade for anything. I read constantly and find that books make great companions. I watch movies often. They are my key to the wider world. I look forward to the day when I can once again live with my best friend and I know even though the sex is over that I have a soul mate on this planet.

Mr. Ebert:
It seems to me that since you have lost your voice your "voice" has become clearer,more defined,and if possible more personal. Your writing has gone from interesting to almost brilliant. I enjoy each of your blog entries more than the last one. You are one of the things that make the Internet worth surfing. Keep up your barrage on mediocrity (and worse, mediocre writing) and I will keep reading and enjoying.
Unashamedly signed,
A Fan.

I cried a bit when I read this. Seems I cry a lot these days being 3 months pregnant, single with two kids and experiencing a bout of loneliness.*honking nose blow and sniffel* I have a fine support system and the ends are met with this help. I am 32. I was getting out of high school as the internet was born. I say born because it has become a living changing thing. Its the darkest stickiest place and a comfortable safe space. Much like the world and still so removed; you can live there and never live you can die there and never die. All the same crimes robbery, sex crimes and the like happen there as well as the joys, love in all its forms and simple escape. I am a reader and writer so it gives me instant access to both pleasures. It seems so many make or included it in their careers and lives. I have begun at this time in my life to enjoy my own company. I believe to do so is a very necessary skill. I am becoming a better mom. I'm rarely truly alone because I'm always with the children. Some mothers and fathers do not have that luxury so I am grateful. The challenges of a lonely period later bare fruit when you discover the joy of human companionship again but can now also truly enjoy delicious solitude. Someone once said "sometimes solitude is the best company". Thanks for the this blog it's a beauty! Best to you and yours!

And this

Ebert: "Just because you're afraid to go outside doesn't mean you're happy inside."

You meant "... doesn't mean you're not happy inside."..?

Ebert: No, I think I meant it the first way. But I don't know from experience.

I think in some ways my experiences with solitude are similar to yours; I was especially intrigued with your phrase "yearning by proxy." I think as a child (an only child), that yearning was one for meaning, significance, a yearning for a way to relate first-hand to a world I was living in but had experienced and affected so very little of.

I really never have been lonely, either. I have very distinctly felt alone, and for long periods of time, but that feeling was always more one of resignation or acceptance. I came to appreciate the freedom that a solitary life can afford, and I enjoyed that feeling of doing what I wanted, whenever I chose. It allowed me to shift direction in my life and explore possibilities.

I didn't marry until two years ago, in my mid- thirties, and I certainly enjoy life so much more with a wonderful, loving husband and friend in my life. But I cannot imagine a more lonely existence than living one's life with the wrong person, out of fear of being alone.

Also,

Your musing on why humans "fall in love". The origins of the concept of "falling in love" is very specific to a time and place (medieval England). It is not universal, historically. In most societies, to the present day for some, being "in love" was not a social requisite for marriage. Therefore, your musing is a faulty misapplication of evolutionary theory.

"I was an alcoholic"?

But you ARE an alcoholic, Roger. You are.

Mr. Ebert,

I disagree with the maxim that misery loves company. Having said that, there is comfort in knowing that others know loneliness as profoundly as me. When the one you love is in the hospital, and you are alone at home, wondering if she will come home again, the feeling is something I have never been able to put into words. When talking about movies to my friends, I quote you all the time, because you frequently express my thoughts better than I can. I never expected you to do this with my thoughts on loneliness.

Loneliness seems obvious to be a nearly universal experience. Although I know this to be the case, I still choose to believe that you do indeed know us, your readers. I've been reading you for many years and I choose to believe that I know you even though I never met you!

Rcalabraro

I always think of what Robert DeNiro's character said in HEAT: "I am alone; I am not lonely." But then he was a bank robber who ended up dead, so maybe that's a bad example.

I often find solace in "conversations" other people produce - books, magazines, music, film, etc. - and yes, the internet provides just enough distance for me to feel connected without having to be connected at the hip.

I'm not a hermit by any stretch - but I do prefer one lover and a handful of close friends over a gaggle of acquaintances or anonymous netizens. It's the way I'm built, for whatever reason, and I like it just fine.

"Someone once said the fundamental reason we get married is because have a universal human need for a witness."

How do you think that sort of idea applies to fame? So many millions of people witness you without you being able to witness them in any way. If I didn't write this comment, for example, you'd have no idea that I exist.

I can't imagine having your sort of situation. If someone knows me, I can safely say that I know them as well. I think that is comforting. How do you feel about having such a public identity?

I think that's very insightful. Lonliness can take so many forms. I grew up in a family with two brothers and a sister and yet I still felt lonely because none of them really shared many interests with me. To me not being lonely is having someone there who can validate all the things you do and like. If they don't share the same interest, at least they can be encouraging or approving. Being with the wrong person could be the lonliest thing on the earth. I think I learned that from my family. Being in the same room with people who don't understand you can be the lonliest place of all. I think your wife's illness is a sure sign you are with the right person to compliment your roaming personality. I hope she is well now and can live for many more years. I am sure it is a treasure to have someone like that.

Roger-I don't know if you've seen Notes on a Scandal, but sometimes I feel like Barbara, only more metally stable.

The bit about the egg says it all.

Hello,

I am from Poland, although I am currently studying in London, and am indeed very lonely for various reasons. My hall is just 100 metres from the Trafalgar Square. I walked along Jermyn Street a few days ago, and I thought of you.

Thank you for those blog posts and movie reviews, I always read them after watching films you had written about.

All the best,

Piotr

Ebert: To be that close to Trafalgar! Have you found the little street of used book stores?

First of all, thank you for evoking one of the greatest Beatles songs of all time for this blog post. It immediately drew me in and it was that song that was swimming through my head as I began to read.

Second of all, your sense of self-awareness and awareness of the emotional behavior of others is astounding... maybe that comes from a lifetime of being a film critic.

The internet, to me, is simultaneously a blessing and a horrific thing. I am horrified because in many instances, genuine emotion such as affection, anger, happiness, and love, have been reduced to "140 characters," or the simple "push" of a "like" button. It frightens me because I wonder... are we now able to both see and express so many opinions, and hear and be heard by so many other people, that we have become numb to real emotion? Does the internet offer a temporary, if comforting outlet for real loneliness that will dissipate soon after the computer has been shut down and we crawl into bed by ourselves?

I think it is a natural human emotion to want to have, as you say, a "witness." You, my friend, might be the exception to the rule. I am happily engaged and spend much of my time with my future partner. Yet day by day, I still seek not only "witness" but validation via facebook, twitter, e-mails, and commenting on blog posts such as yours.

I know there is such a thing as an unhealthy obsession with browsing the internet. But... I have come to the conclusion that it is also a beautiful thing. If we connect with the right people, ideas we cling to and believe in so dearly can be validated or rejected by others, giving us closure or further enlightenment that we might not otherwise have.

"There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination."
Coleridge, "On Dejection"

The problem with chasing happiness, according to John Stuart Mill, is that we can only find happiness when we stop looking for it. We often expect others or external variables to supply that happiness--so when life or others are less than perfect, people keep seeking more, more, more from others, from continual job changing, from the acquisition of physical possessions. We're not a society that realizes the value in contentment.

We as Americans always expect someone to mirror ourselves--but looking for a mirror that replicates ourselves is narcissistic or inhibits another from their own self-expression. People don't like difference but feel lonely when they don't find their own match.

People have to realize that nothing and no one person can supply their every desire or need. My sister may be the person I can talk to about parenting, one friend may be the person I can talk to about times past, one I can talk to about spiritual matters.

That said, there is loneliness that stems from rejection, isolation, or neglect. People put their own desires (and loneliness) first and won't reach out to others, even, sadly, sometimes to the people who reach out to them, who would provide a listening ear.

Hi Roger. I'm a drinking student (36) in the writing program at New School University. I used to believe that my drinking and my writing were interdependent, one and the same. These days I'm not so sure. The well-oiled machinery is back-firing. I'm trapped in a loop. How did you stop? How does one stop oneself? I need to stop.

Ebert: There's no need to drink. Here is a way to stop:

http://j.mp/1MyzCH

Good luck.

The "egg" comic is an altered Toothpaste For Dinner comic. Here's the unaltered original:

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/080905

Please provide credit & link back to toothpaste for dinner, not this altered version.

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night..."

This blog led me to find that poem, and that writer, and James Joyce's "The Dead." It gave me a jolt reading these essays, hearing a man who cannot talk scream on the internet at the top of his lungs. Looking through all the links commenters have left to their blogs, I find a network of interlocking stories written by people whose identities remain unknown to me and yet I feel I know them unusually well. (Your wife...your politics...your approaching death...)

At the same time, I wonder about the Internet. There's a lot there, but it's almost like a drug. There are real wonders amidst the digital text, but there are real addictions too, and terrors, and moments where people will stay on even though they have nothing to do.

But I still enjoy what it has to offer. Much as I enjoy reading a very long, capacious book, some of those are online. David Bordwell regularly posts essays that could be printed in book form - and indeed they are; his book "Minding Movies" comes out next April. And you can find "Chimes at Midnight" on YouTube...but surely you know of this already?

Chimes at Midnight, Part One:http://t.co/jruQfGG
Eleanor Rigby (which should have been one of those songs at the end of the post): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dsz4dB6DuM
The Complete Text of "Howl": http://sprayberry.tripod.com/poems/howl.txt

A lot of this, I'm afraid, is due to the immenseness of the world in which we live. A person can no longer be a big fish in a little pond, and in fact, there are no little ponds left to speak of. We've shot past the point of being alone in the middle of the school. If Google Earth has told us anything, it's that the farther away the camera is, the less distinct the details are; so much so that we're no longer fish in ponds at all - distance and isolation have made us inseparable from the body of water around us.

So this desire to expose ourselves in bite-sized tweets, larger Facebook posts, overlong comments (Senor Kettle address Monsieur Pot), and full blogs is less about connecting than one might think. That's definitely a component, and I can't deny I get a thrill when someone responds to my writing, perhaps less so when they tell me I suck. But in a bigger sense, I'm just stating a level of mere existence. "Hi, I'm here. I'm above the landscape, not bled indistinctly into it."

The difficulty with that is that, if everyone does it, our bid at standing out is supplanted by an unconscious act going along with the crowd. We're all trying to buck the dark recesses of anonymity. Once upon a time, you did it by writing, or acting, or if you weren't particularly adept at those, by being sexy, but the reason you did it was to attempt some scale of recognition. You were here. You didn't just die from the species yesterday, get mourned today and forgotten tomorrow. You made an impact somehow, but impact is so hard to achieve anymore.

We're like fish in a school, swimming in the opposite direction to be noticed, oblivious to the truth that if we're all swimming to be noticed, we're all swimming the same.

Such a lovely piece, thank you. I'm one of those people for whom loneliness feels like a constant. I have a husband, and children, and a family that loves me, and yet I feel always alone. Like nobody can touch the Me that is me. And it isn't a nice feeling. For years, I was afraid to use the telephone, and still have trouble, and I don't like going to parties where there will be people I don't know, or dealing with more than one or two friends at a time. I shut down and observe, in these situations. It's like I'm an anthropologist instead of an active member of society. And yet I need that. I need to observe and to be observed. Otherwise, what am I?

And then my children tackle me, and my dog barks, and my husband hands me a coffee, and everything is perfect, for a moment. And I get by.

Beautifully written. I really believe that there are two types of people...the deep thinkers with a yearning and both angst and joy in life and the others who keep the status quo and are happy enough, not really giving life much thought. I had my soul awakened by a deep love,hearty laughter, and friendship with someone who had to move away, and only now do I know lonliness. I think of this person in all the small moments of life, am thankful to have had such a deep connection..almost surreal...but I would not have this unspoken sadness now, would have not known that such a love could exist, and would have been happy enough. And so I just started looking at blogs, and the internet even though I have a full life with many friends and family. Maybe the internet is a way to write a letter in a bottle that someone will read.

[[When I spent a year in Cape Town, half a world away from everyone and everything I knew, I wasn't lonely for a moment. I was enveloped in the pleasure of exile. I've always enjoyed fiction about exile; give me a novel that starts with someone alone in a room in a strange city, and I perk up.]]

I am glad, Mr. Ebert, that you can find pleasure in exile.

I regret that there is no pleasure to be found in mine. I further regret that, while there is freedom to be found, and I can find it, I cannot truly experience the freedom I find.

-The Albany Exile
http://albanyexile.blogspot.com/

God-damned beautiful, Mr. Roger Ebert.

(insert about 20 blank lines here, each to be read as a silent pause.)

Pleased Chaz is back to work, concerned the bustle doesn't give her quite enough space.

I've known some agoraphobics for quite a long time. If there's any one thing to be said, it's that they consider the size of their worlds too great a responsibility.

As to being here myself, Gale Snoats put it right in "Raising Arizona": "you know we never go anywhere but what there's a purpose." Sorting it out as I go along.

Otherwise, muh boy Einstein put it better than I have so far:

I live in that solitude which, painful in youth, is delicious in maturity.

Damn it, Roger. You had me welling up at the end. Splendid piece.

I can't say I've ever felt lonely, even though I went through long stretches of my youth without a whole lot of friends. I was homeschooled throughout high school.

However, I have a large, very loving family who have always given me the time of day when I needed it. When I got to college I found a whole slew of wonderful people whom I love dearly.

That said, I won't lie, I'm an anxious person who has often worried about being alone. I've never felt truly lonely, but I'll worry nonetheless. My greatest fears always entail something happening to my family or my friends.

This comes one day after my girlfriend broke up with me. How did you know?

I think the web simultaneously caters to and remedies lonliness. In the past people have been able to reach out to radio, television and film to subdue or offset lonliness. What makes the Internet so poweful is that it reaches back.

I can brood, fritter away hours on half-watched shows and half-read posts(often at the same time). Lived alone (if the cats don't count) for several years after divorce. Lonely at times but not always sure for what or why. Remember feeling that way as a child, but also reveling in odd moments alone. A freedom of recognizing me as an independent part of the large world even at age six or so.

Two plus years ago moved in here with Dennis. Missed him terribly when he spent three weeks in hospital followed by two in physical rehab. Happy to hear Chaz is home and running the universe again. Twenty years of life as a couple has spoiled and shaped you in wonderful ways, Roger. Thank you for this piece.

I'm a loner by nature. Unless I know someone well or have something in common with them, I can find interaction pretty difficult, but I know I can't function completely by myself. I'm in my second year of college now, and I spend what my Dad would call "way too much time" in my dorm room on the computer (he's right). That's probably why I've become such a constant contributor to forums and comments on blogs. I like to know somebody is hearing what I have to say. It's an incredibly narcissistic attitude to be sure, but it's all I have.

For that matter, I think going to the movies is also, on average, a very narcissistic activity. We go to movies, especially movies that are meant purely as entertainment, to laugh at people who are worse off than ourselves. That's probably why, as you have pointed out time and time again, so many movie characters are by certain degrees stupid or mentally ill, but are seen by the movies they appear in as either completely normal or "quirky". We don't want to see people in a better situation than we are, we want to feel better about our own situation.

On that subject, I'm seeing "The Social Network" tonight. Based on the reviews I've read, I'm really curious to see how the movie reflects on me and my generation.

In your opening litany of lonely person wants, I would include "connection," which might serve as a larger canopy of the fundamental needs we often turn to the Internet to satisfy.

Thank you for this eloquent, moving, and reflective piece. I was especially charmed by your final, unexpected revelation. As a fellow lover of solitude, I felt a certain transformation as I followed the progression of your thoughtful wanderings. And by the end of the reading, I felt connected.

When my wife awakes from her slumber, I will share this piece with her. That's not such a bad thing, is it?

I was also reminded of this exquisite poem by Li Young-Lee:

Eating Alone

I’ve pulled the last of the year’s young onions.
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold,
brown and old. What is left of the day flames
in the maples at the corner of my
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.
By the cellar door, I wash the onions,
then drink from the icy metal spigot.

Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears. I can’t recall
our words. We may have strolled in silence. But
I still see him bend that way—left hand braced
on knee, creaky—to lift and hold to my
eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet
spun crazily, glazed in slow, glistening juice.

It was my father I saw this morning
waving to me from the trees. I almost
called to him, until I came close enough
to see the shovel, leaning where I had
left it, in the flickering, deep green shade.

White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas
fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.

I hope Chaz is doing well.

Perhaps, you haven't felt loneliness even in foreign places, because you always know that you have someone, even if the are not physical there, that understands and gets you? And just from reading your blogs, it seems like you are someone with excellent social skills, and are able to connect or feel comfortable around total strangers?

From my own personal experience I have felt and continue to feel a great deal of loneliness. Not because I don't have some friends or family, but because my social skills have always been poor. In social situations I've always been uncomfortable, interacting with other people has been tiring, and it has been almost impossible to truly connect with another person. And so I find some solace in interacting with others through the internet, though you are right that it is a poor substitute, but I have to make do while I improve myself slowly. And hopefully I'll be as lucky as you one day, and no longer feel alone.

There are those who are lonely. There are also those who are just loners.

As a kid, I almost always found myself feeling more comfortable when I was left in peace to do my own thing, alone. I had friends but was always happier when it was just me.

I spent three years of my life in Taiwan and I knew no one there for my first while there. To echo your image of sitting in a cafe with a newspaper, known by no one (a bit harder to pull off in your case, being the most famous movie critic around), I would sit alone in a Teppanyaki restaurant in Taichung, eating rice with a pair of chopsticks and trying to read a Chinese translation of 'Animal Farm.' Most people left me alone, as they only spoke Mandarin and/or Taiwanese and assumed they couldn't communicate with the Lao Wai.

I didn't discourage this impression even after my Mandarin improved. I enjoyed it very much. In fact, I'm preparing to go back overseas as we speak, to live and teach English and generally enjoy the status of the unusual outsider I had become so accustomed to. The United States makes me ill at ease these days.

I can function around people when I need to. I just find greater peace when I don't have to.

Roger - Thank you for this gift. Thank you for giving us so much in your writing. Connections are everywhere. Voices calling out. Voices heard. Voices answered. The bravery with which you share your personal thoughts and experiences amazes and inspires. Do you feel optimistic about our ability as people to form lasting bonds through the Web -- or does the Web serve more to strengthen relationships that are developed face-to-face through body language, intuitiveness and touch? I'm curious to know your thoughts.

Some of the loneliest people I know are the ones that are constantly surrounded by friends and family.

I am so happy to live alone with my cat and my laptop.

A beautiful piece. The last two paragraphs were very moving and hard hitting.

Thanks for this beautiful post, Roger. I love the ending, and am relieved to hear that Chaz is now fine.

I find it interesting that in the build-up, you speak of never being lonely as a child, but seem to frame it in the context of never being *bored.* I've been lonely, but never bored. Like you, I do and have loved traveling alone (being alone in Prague was one of the most beautiful travel experiences of my life), and I am always happy to see a movie or performance regardless of whether I have company. I still do this, largely because for so long, being around people was what made me feel lonely. Being social made me feel unseen, unknown, uncomprehended.

What the internet did for me and my loneliness was actually quite profound. Around 1996, being online lead me to what I never thought I'd find - a group of like-minded people. Like computers themselves, the descriptor of "like-minded" is really neither a good or a bad thing. I could have found a group that encouraged and enhanced the bad parts of myself. But instead, I found the tolerant, the mind-expanding, the willing-to-debate, the willing-to-embrace.

That community, after 5 years, started to fall into smaller parts, but many of us keep in touch and a few of us remain deeply connected and tightly-knit. I've since then watched the build and fall of many online communities. I can see the tribes flux and swell and I see people flail to gather some sort of understanding of themselves, and resort to flailing *at* others in an effort to find a core. In contrast, your site and your willingness to engage with interest and humor has been reminding me of my old community... we're not "like-minded," per se, but the tolerance exhibited here, the willingness to accept even when disagreeing, is the example that I share with everyone who says this society is pulling itself apart. This is why people reveal here - even when people disagree, there is still that embrace.

Now I'm talking too much! Thanks again for sharing your own moment of soul-pain, and I wish as always for long continued lives for you both.

...see all the beautiful and amazing people commenting, sharing, echoing! I do so love it here.

Heh. That one hit a little close to home Rog. I don't think I'm one of your 2 mentioned readers, but I'm definitely a pitifully lonely borderline shut-in. I'm a 28-year-old virgin who only leaves his apartment for work and food. I guess it's because I'm so pitifully normal. I never really liked drinking, nor drugs like marijuana. Just wasn't my thing. I don't really have any hobbies either, I like music, and sometimes I talk about it on the internet, but everyone likes music... I drive a Japanese economy car, and I live in a crappy 3 room apartment. I'm fine with both of those things, and have no urge to upgrade. I've never felt like I needed a nicer car or house to justify my existence.

I don't know, maybe I'm pitifully timid. Crowds tend to scare me, give me cold sweats, make me worry about things like, "Am I standing up straight? I hope it doesn't look like I'm slouching," to the point that my back hurts by the time I cross a crowd of people.

Every morning when I get up, I make sure to talk to myself a bit as to avoid the first person I talk to (at work, or at breakfast) hearing my throat clear.

At this point, while I understand friendship, romantic relations seem like a completely alien idea to me. Almost scary, in fact. I've never been romantically involved, and the thought of it seems bizarre to me. It particularly pains me that my Mother is convinced I am gay, and bugs me about it every time I visit for thanksgiving or Christmas.

So to answer your question, yes, I use the internet to cope with loneliness, and no it isn't a very good substitute for human interaction.

Ebert: I can tell you're hurting. Is there some kind of volunteer work you might be able to find, low on interaction, high on usefulness?

Roger,

Out of all your blogs, this one is particularly striking to me on a personal level. Everything you said about the internet is true: it simultaneously connects and separates us exponentially, providing avenue for some to express themselves without the physical barriers in real life or extending the sea of solitude when we realize our voices are just a drop in the mass of snippets and conversations.

I began blogging as a means to lay down thoughts from my head. Everyday, whether it be walking down the block or reading a article, my mind revs up into full gear and can't stop churning out and connecting ideas and information to one another (just last night, I was reading an Times article on Alzheimer's and realized how one of my favorite novels, Flowers for Algernon, was easily a parable for the neurodegenerative disease). Blogging became my primary means of writing out these thoughts mostly because I wanted peace of mind (I find that writing them out allows me to mull over something else) and that oftentimes, it's difficult to find people in real life who are willing to suspend their other priorities in life to simply discuss ideas for the sake of discussing; and having just re-read The Catcher in the Rye, sometimes I can't help but feel that so many people around me, many who claim to be intellectual, are really, truly phonies – prod them with a question or idea that hasn't been answered by somebody else, and on so many occasions the response is "I don't know" or "I'm too tired/stressed out/preoccupied to think about stuff like that"; even worse, call them out on their hypocrisy (anti-nuclear yet pro-MRI machines?) and they either get childishly defensive, self-righteous, or even venomous (what do you know?!)

While I'm fortunate enough to know people in real life who don't fit those descriptions aforementioned, most of the time we're all busy with our daily priorities and realistically, finding a place to sit down and talk about what we find interesting has become more and more impractical. With the internet, I'm blessed with this ability to continue talking to these same people – both in real life and on the net – and still remaining who I am. There have been times, though, where there is almost a lonely despair when logging onto the internet: I wonder, "is this all worth it? To keep sharing and posting and articulating these thoughts and ideas so that people can digest them in a few seconds and then move on to the next bit?" Sometimes it gets to the point where I begin questioning my own existence, as to why I'm reaching out into the non-physical realm of the internet.

These thoughts used to make me depressed, but no longer. Indeed, a driving force behind my desire to be on the net is one of loneliness. In real life, it can get lonely when I feel that there's no one whom I can immediately talk to and share with the ideas rolling about in my consciousness, and that to talk to people I would have to relinquish my mind, my essence in order to even be socially accepted. With the net, I don't have to worry about these social restrictions: I write what I think, and those who are interested stop by to see what I may have conjured up, and those who I'd otherwise be unlikely to associate with in real life pass on by for other things. I don't need to dilute my ideas into something that otherwise wouldn't get me blank stares from a normal social situation; instead I write for the sake of writing and (hope) to target those interested in cognitive dissonance for the sake of ideas, discussion, and mulling over of things. My lonely spirit is a part of who I am, and I am embrace to its core.

Ebert: It seems to me you are going about things in the right way.

I remember very clearly reading your review for Duane Hopwood, starring David Schwimmer. In that review, you stated almost perfectly what it is like to be an alcoholic. The entire review is littered with little jewels of insight. I remember thinking at the time, "Wow, Roger Ebert really nailed it." I must admit that I still haven't summoned the balls to see the movie. It lurks on my Netflix queue, always towards the top, but never quite making it.
As someone who has recently been pondering my own life-long relationship with alcohol, and whether or not to throw in the towel, I appreciate once again the tidbits of your own experiences that you share in this entry.
I spent five weeks in September and October sober, as sort of a trial run. Then I went on vacation to New Orleans, and well, I was in New Orleans. New Orleans, to me at least, proves the rule that you hear all the time, "You can't be a part-time alcoholic."
Anyhow, I haven't drank since I've been back from vacation, and little things in life keep popping up and whispering in my ear that its time to get serious about putting this behind me.
Thanks for being one of those whispers.

I understand why you walk, even though I'm primarily a bike rider. Now that I think about it, I ride by bicycle to get to the places I want to walk. You're observant. You need the pace of walking to temper the technology, the rush. We, you and I, are able to utilize a universal reset switch which, seemingly, fewer and fewer people are able to access. That reset switch is away from technology; it lies in the ability to appreciate this existence and how seemingly impossible the strands are. I notice the sky. I notice the clouds and appreciate how the majority of oxygen is formed from phytoplankton blooming in the seas. I am that philosopher which fell in a hole, because while I was walking, I was also looking up at the sky, at the courtship of the seagulls. It's no surprise that painkiller and anti-depressant prescriptions are at record levels: people fill themselves up with stimuli which are connectionless.

That's life. We have to let things flow and deal with the unexpected randomness of what the future might hold, it's that mystery that makes life real and raw, and twirls your mind in wonder. It's our evolution of technology mixed with our fragile emotions and now here is the outcome. We are pushing forward towards a Brave New World it seems more or less.

The internet is the most personal human invention, I think; for better or for worse, it's the collective human experience digitally preserved. Digital archaeology? http://pandorasbasement.blogspot.com/2009/11/digital-archaeology.html

I am sorry to hear you were an alcoholic. It is really nasty stuff that doesn't even give you an good feeling, it sort of just removes the feeling replacing it with one which is still bad, but not as bad as the feeling that is difficult to deal with.

If it helps anyone, I used to have new people around me all the time, I would give people a place to live and walk up to any stranger and make friends.

There can still be a loneliness in those situations, especially the few minutes you find yourself all by yourself.

The day my father was diagnosed with cancer, moving home, calling it a surrender, and spending time there became a big priority.

Not knowing what you've got until it's gone, that is something I just don't really subscribe to. Or to put it in the best way I have ever heard it.

twitter.com/Karl_Lagerfeld

I can have remorse, but no regrets

A great essay, Roger, and wonderful comments throughout. I found Barky's comments especially meaningful, for I grew up under the fierce glare of an unforgiving world, and its shadow haunts me still. (Motto: "Even when they're wrong, it's still--somehow--your fault.")

Even writing this much feels risky, especially on the Rage Machine that is the Internet. Some years ago, I posted an e-mail column that I thought was a light-to-medium-hearted meditation on my experience with alcohol and how I made peace with Demon Scotch. Someone wrote back that I was being "too personal and revelatory." It sounds stupid, but after all I'd been through, the remark stung, and I became cautious again.

Things are better now. I married very late and am much less lonely now, but these days I still feel that grim spectre, because of a lack of money and where I live--a bad and isolated neighborhood on the West Coast--and so I'm unable to get out, walk the many miles I used to and encounter the world, both natural and human, like I want to, need to. (Poverty can also lead to loneliness)

The world outside is where real companionship is found. The Internet is only a tool and should never be mistaken for anything but. It can lead to companionship--it's how I met my wife--but it's not companionship itself, anymore than a hammer--which can also be a weapon--is the house built using it.

I have Twitter followers and FB "friends," but the ones who count are those whom I see across the bar, a restaurant table, or who walk with me along a leafy trail; the buddy I share cigars with, the lovely smiling face coming through the door at the end of the long day.

Reading these comments, looking through these blogs, I sometimes feel like Miss Lonelyhearts.

That's the, erm, feeling I often get reading the comments too, although not quite sure I mean that as a compliment:
I'm sure some would read the comments on the Psychic thread or the NSFW thread and say "There are some lonely people on the Internet... 9_9 "

Now, me, fluctuating between free-lance and unemployment, I don't have the widest circle of friends, also have a physical handicap that keeps me from jogging around the block every morning, and being the proverbial Nice Guy, am not on the A-list of most of the opposite sex.
But do I start trying to build and cling to my Net Identity on the great electronic castles of sand? Well, do I? :)

I think this column, and any theories about the timing, says a LOT more about the poster than the topic.
I sometimes feel as if I'm one of the few other rationally perspective regulars on the commentors (although where's Tom Dark when you need him?), but that's because I focus my interests--If I decide to fritter my spare time on a film board, I talk about film, and if I go to a book board, I talk about books...Everyone loves an expert, just ask the expert.
I don't feel like I'm going to some corner bar to drown my intellectual and self-esteem sorrows like a character out of a Rod Serling script--I just like talking about movies, like this guy I used grow up watching on a PBS show when I was a kid.
And unlike said corner-barfly, I don't moan that nobody understands me, or that the young kids are sending this society to heck...If I don't come up with something brilliant to add to the discussion, I delete it. And then I do something in my personal life, like get the mail and whip up a batch of molasses-nut cookies. I might go out and shop a used bookstore, albeit not in Trafalgar. Sometimes in the evening, I'll watch the TV, and not "stare" at The Wire, but try to search out the most obscure movies on TCM or Instant Netflix. (Which has now become the last-refuge substitute for the Late-Nite Movie Host that I was too young to enjoy when it still existed as a symbolic cultural phenomenon for the solitary, and all the popcorn-and-cocoa midnight pleasures therein.)

Maybe it's a touch of Asperger's, or maybe I'm just conditionally acclimated to never having gotten the girl in high school--But there is a difference between being Solitary, being Lonely, and being a Depressed Wet Blanket looking for a spotlight to make him feel like holy mud instead of regular.
Would I welcome more people in my social circle if Cupid knocked on my door tomorrow?--To be honest, I'm not quite sure. But even if I don't crawl into a bottle over it, I don't do the next best thing and bend the Internet's ear about it, and post sixteen-paragraph discussions of Goethe when I don't. :)

i don't know if i was necessarily a lonely child, but i certainly valued my alone time.

the internet was just becoming common as i entered middle school, and i took to it quickly. i probably made more friends in chat rooms and message boards than i ever did in real life. i was able to talk to people with interests like mine, and that was something hard to come by in the "real" world for me.

it fulfills my dual desire for alone time and communication with others. i am so grateful for it.

And Robert and Virginia Heinlein traveled by air to increase the odds of their perishing at the same time in (Robert's words) "a common disaster."

One reason this website is on the top 10 of those that appeal to me is its creator tangibly interacts with his readership, to an extent beyond what might be thought possible. The shiny dime, the playful advice, the words "You inspired this!"--lifetime Keepers all, and there is more, but there is also plenty of evidence that my own thrilling cache of Ebertiana is not even the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg for what must literally be thousands of people.

There is another, more crucial reason I'm here so often, though. Engagement of the active mind is a proven staver of Alzheimer's Disease. The welcome mat for contributions for such as "Photo in Need of a Caption" helps keep the mind-eating Wolf from the door. Many thanks!

After I posted my comment I found that the number of comments had gone from 99 to 108--then I read Q. Le's comment, which also mentions Alzheimer's, and more thoroughly. Tip of the hat to you, Q. Le!

I was born at a time when the internet was just beginning exist. I still remember being allowed on the computer for half an hour daily to play my computer game of choice. I was always very jealous of my older brother, who got a full hour. But other than that, computers didn't matter. I was a huge tomboy, always outside and running around. I have a full complement of scars to prove it. And I'm proud of them. I don't remember at what point in my life the internet became a part of my day to day life. But according to my brother, we must have had it when I was around 5, and I started to make use of it maybe when I was 10-12 or so. Now that was long-winded, yes, but I do have a point.
I come here, to read your thoughts, and to share my own, because I find your thoughts interesting. I find that I learn things here that I've never learned before. My prof was trying to explain American politics to us (she's American so she felt the need to enlighten us) and to my surprise, I knew what she was talking about. Thanks to this blog.
Am I lonely? Rarely. I have the internet. When that bores me I have books. When that bores me I have my friends. When all those fail me, I have me. I'm good at entertaining myself. In my family, you have to be. Then I have school work. So even when I'm bored, I'm always busy. And yes, I want to leave my mark somewhere. Even if it's a fleeting virtual mark that only a few people will read. It's that feeling that makes me want to start my own blog. But then I never do. I doubt I have the attention span, to be honest.
But my point is that no, I don't come here because I'm lonely. As a rule, I'm used to loneliness. You don't have much choice when one of your closest friends is over 10,000 kilometres away, fighting in a war that isn't winnable. But that's a rant for another day.
On a more cheerful note, I'm glad Chaz is doing well. I had my appendix taken out when I was 8. I have a horror (well, to an 8-year-old it was terrifying)story about that, but once again, story for another day.
Oh and I think I might've figured out why I wanted to check out your blog. I've heard plenty about you - I think you did Oprah. Maybe? I should YouTube it. Anyways, I probably saw this article, it's from a local (well national, but whatever)newspaper. I don't know if bit.ly links work anywhere other than Twitter (with my luck, probably not), but here you go:
http://bit.ly/d2Quf8

You know, I've spent a couple years feeling like the internet has been making my whole world change really rapidly, and I'm very confused about what's just a change in my own life and my own perceptions (I'm 19, so you'd expect change), and what's actually changing about the culture I'm living in. My approach to making judgments about any kind of art, humor, or personal expression in general seems to constantly shift.

I run into a lot of images, jokes, references, and ideas that immediately influence my feelings about all this change, either inspiring more confusion and throwing the big picture further into chaos, or helping to put things into perspective and flesh out a working understand of how 21st century society is developing. Your blog is definitely in the latter category, this one especially. Taking the time to think through the ways the internet is affecting people and write about them in smartly structured articles like these was a good idea, and you're the only one I can find doing it well. So thanks, you're making me feel saner with your observations.

I love your writing, Roger Ebert. Love it. You do not disappoint.

I recently have had to admit to myself that I am lonely. I don't think I was for a long time but now I am. Not sure what changed.... I can still entertain myself for the most part but there are times when I need to share something with someone. And I'm having a lot of trouble finding the someone. Even with the internet.

Anyway, thanks for this lovely, thoughtful piece. Hope Chaz is doing well.

But why are you writing them? Don't you have anything else to do?

It's odd. I was thinking this after reading your entry on the afterlife, and I wanted to post a reply but didn't.

I wish there was a word for the modern internet 'pen-pal,' where a reader feels a connection with the writer, comments are appreciated, and while it's personal and of substance, it's also removed, impersonal and more a series of single interactions? It's a connection that is, for most of us commenting on this blog, maintained only during the instance of our reading, our replying, your reading and maybe your replying--although the connection's effects can be felt for some time afterwards.

I don't know. Your writing often makes me feel something (nostalgia today), and makes me consider things again or things I hadn't considered in the first place. So thanks for posting, I like your prose.

You likely would find this video quite interesting. Perhaps you could post it on your blog. It seems like an obvious invention. Yet, could it be curse? Either way, it's pretty interesting.

http://www.flixxy.com/convert-plastic-to-oil.htm

you speak of being alone without being lonely. I'm about to go thru the opposite. I have cerebral palsy, and i live with my grandparents/ theyre getting old and ill have to move., fortunately; i qualify for 24hr in home care; which means technically, ill never be alone. however, they won't be 'company' they'll be 'employees' or 'help'. they'll have their own lives. spend their time on cel phones waiting for my next request.

never alone but always lonely.

Ebert: If my experience is of any use, and it probably isn't, you may find a really good person. Care givers and hospital nurses lead tough lives, and I find that a smile or a question about their families is very welcome.

The reason I post on your blog is that I have admired you for years, and the idea of communicating with one of my personal idols is amazing to me. I could have written you a letter, but I'm lousy at mailing them. Besides, I always felt vaguely uncomfortable at the idea of mailing letters to people I don't know. It always felt like an unwarranted intrusion. However, here on the internet, you have an open encouragement to talk to you, which I find to be a minor miracle.

I am also, as it happens, bipolar. I am so bipolar that the federal government has agreed that I am too disabled to hold a job. People don't tend to believe me when I tell them--it's the old "no one on the internet knows you're a dog" phenomenon. I present well, so I can't possibly be crazy. Mentally ill people are all raging lunatics somewhere. I am fighting the good fight against that image, but it's still there.

The internet, to me, has been a godsend. Slightly over fifteen years ago, I moved about thirteen hundred miles from home. My mother has lived in the same house since about 1981. Since hooking back up with my friends from back home on Facebook, I've discovered that most of them still live within blocks of where they did when I left. I moved to a strange town (I use the word advisedly) in a different climate, from one of the largest cities in the world to a small town where the nearest mall was across an international border. It was an interesting experience, but I wish I'd had the internet in those days. This was a town where we had to get up a petition to get Othello into the local theatre. I'm not sure I saw a new drama that wasn't Shakespeare in the entire time I was living there.

But now, there is Netflix--I can have just about every movie I want either mailed to me or streamed into my home or possibly both. There are my good friends--yes, friends--at the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Forum and Apollo Hoax (we're on the "Apollo was real" side and trying to educate the uneducateable) Forum. I've even met a couple of them in person, which is supposed to be a bad idea but which works there because we are actually ourselves on the board. There are a few with standing dinner invitations, though they won't take me up on it because they live thousands of miles away and have no real reason to be in Olympia. I am, as I said, back in touch with the people I loved and lost track of. (That pesky letter-writing thing.) This wouldn't have been possible when I left home.

I'll tell you what used to make me lonely. It's never really been actually being alone. It was when I watched groups of people who all seemed to like me one-on-one form units which excluded me. Which happened a lot, when I was growing up. I've never been sure if it was how bookish I was or how the bipolar made me act.

Oh, and while depression can be treated with therapy and medication, the meds don't always work. Especially for bipolar, where we're using medication for other conditions which might help ours as well. My current medication (which doesn't work) was originally developed as an anti-seizure medication. I guess we're not important.

Ebert: One small but meaningful reason you're important: Men did walk on the Moon.

'Goodbye Solo' was one of the more perfect representations of loneliness I've seen in film. This article made me think of that movie.

If you're searching for truth, put your opinions and ideas out into the world and see how they hold up. Use your environment and the people in it as a strainer. When the web was invented it no longer took any courage to do this. A blessing, i think. Who needs the ignorant to be courageous?

Thank you for this piece. The last two paragraphs were particularly poignant.

I had a very similar experience. I have always enjoyed being alone and still do. I have travelled alone and found it to be a great experience. I wasn't in any kind of serious or long term relationship until I was 25, when I met my wife. I would like to say it was specifically my wife that made the difference but in fact I had been thinking for a while that I would like to find a partner. I think it was this change in my attitudes that prevented the things that can end new relationships from ending this one. Nonetheless, it took a while to get used to making decisions for more than just myself.

Now, a mere 6 years on, I can't imagine living without my wife. Recently we have had to adjust to the birth of another child. Life is hard and we haven't any time for each other (no exhortations from anyone to "make time" please, it's not possible at the moment). Although I see my wife every day, I miss her terribly. I feel like I am getting a (hopefully brief) taste of what it would be like not to have her there to talk to, share moments with, to live together with. It's not good.

I like my life better with my wife, but the cost of that is the fear that it could all be taken away and I would be left alone and, for the first time, truly lonely.

I rarely comment on your journal, but I've definitely asked myself the same questions you're asking about the people who comment at length. I imagine that some of these comments take a couple of hours to construct. That's a lot of effort to put into a relatively anonymous observation. Where do our words go? Is anyone committing them to memory? Are they learning from the observations about the world that boil up inside us until they spill over onto a message board? Maybe all it amounts to is an exercise in expression, the promise that what we have to say COULD be considered, that our observations out of loneliness or whatever other motivating factor have the potential to be more than simply words tossed into the e-void.

Tomorrow's my 31st birthday (and Joni Mitchell's 67th, by the way). I've been living in a new city for a few months now, and lately I've been feeling more alone than I have in some time. Certain pursuits keep me happy, focused, and entertained, but the move has certainly made me realize the value of the people I've left behind. The Internet has become more of a significant way to connect with the people I love than it ever has. I'd be a completely different person without it, a product of different relationships, different experiences.

I don't know. It's nice to hear from people who are similarly affected, and maybe that's all those of us who use the Internet to connect with others can ask for.

This is why I read you. An beautiful, thoughtful blog that hits home. I don't agree with half of your film reviews, but I love your writing. I love this blog as I understand alcoholism and being alone, but not feeling lonely ... Thanks for being so ope and honest. I'll keep reading.

I read your blog because it feeds my mind and stimulates me to muse, and create. Thank you for sharing. :)

Heavy stuff Mr Ebert. Great insights.Thanks

Once again, a lovely meditation. Thank you so much, Mr. Ebert. Your writings make me feel less alone, because you are so articulate in expressing exactly how I feel about so many things. So glad to hear Chaz is doing well.

For any music lovers who get this far down in the comments section: the loneliest music I know is a classical piece (loneliness entails no words, doesn't it?) called "The Swan of Tuonela," by Jean Sibelius. In it the lonely figure is the cor anglais (English horn)... or so my imagination suggests...

Sometime if you're feeling isolated, give it a listen. It's isolated with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gn8xhdJ9Hs

To me the Internet is the opposite of nihilistic. We are all creating a massive thing here, a million gigabytes tall and a trillion wide! Even if it's mostly made out of illiterate comments, misinformation on Wikipedia, and porn, there's a few people's ideas and hopes and aspirations in there too.

Hey Roger,

I think there are positives and negatives for everything in life. The Internet, while showcasing the best of humanity, becomes often know for showcasing the worst. Tyler Clementi became a soul victimized by two people who felt it was funny to expose someone's private moments on the web for all to see as a cruel joke. Some people, when he committed suicide, thought he was a coward for doing so and that if he had enough self-confidence, he wouldn't have had to do that.

I think the difference between the Internet and the real world is range. You can get closer to the best of humanity and the worst of humanity when you are on the information superhighway. Celebrities can meet their fans and their foes all at once without really having control over how much contact that they can have.

Speaking of celebrities, I talk to quite a few of them on Twitter. It's odd, because I am no one of any importance really. I work a simple part-time grocery store job making enough to pay my school loans and the other bills I need to pay. I help out my mom take care of the house the best I can since my father got sick with Lupus.

Why on earth would they want to talk to me when they do is beyond me.

I don't go to parties, I don't go out much at all. I don't post pictures of the fab dinners I should be having or taking random pictures of myself because I have this impression that I am super attractive.

Just thinking about it now, I think the Internet is largely a place where (and you have probably said this) where we can feel everything we do in life is important. It's strange to me how we in real life, without blog designs or twitter accounts, don't find many of these mundane things (going to work, getting married or divorced, going out on a date) wouldn't find any of these things interesting.

I feel like Captain Obvious so far.

BTW, I wanted to apologize for my ill-fated attempt at selling you on video games using rather primitive examples. My attempt was nothing more than an attempt. I wasn't completely looking for success in the matter. I was just interested in showcasing some examples because I figured a door was opening.

Perhaps I can't read, or I missed something when I was recording the video.

Anyhow, I'll stop there.

Matthew

Writing is a lonely profession and some people are much more suited to it than others. I've been married, had girlfriends, but at this point in my life find I prefer to be by myself more often than not. I'm not sure this has anything to do with commenting on things on the internet, which I do quite often. Hell yes, I love to spout off! Get me started on a political argument, for example, and I'll never shut up. (You may or may not remember some of my previous comments.) But I do think I've achieved something approaching peace of mind about myself and my life and what I do. I won't say I never get depressed, because I do. But I also consider myself quite fortunate, to be able to do what I love (I write for a small newspaper) and get paid for it. Life isn't half-bad, and if I never hook up again with someone, I can live with that. It might even be what I hope will happen.

I've always loved being alone. For some strange reason it makes me feel liberated for awhile. I can see how the internet can help people who feel lonely get connected to others and at the same time disconnect them from real human interactions. But, I find when I'm lonely it feels infinitely better to go outside and look at a tree whose leaves are changing color. Looking at those leaves is like looking at a picture of a million people who feel just the way you do about life. And feeling a fall breeze is like feeling a warm embrace from a long lost friend that you never met. That might just be me though. :)

I can see how the internet can help those that are lonely feel accepted by society and at the same time deprive them. But, I find that when I'm lonely the best remedy is to go outside and look at a tree's whose leaves are changing colors. Each leaf is like a person whose experiences mirror your own. And a cool fall breeze is like a warm embrace from a long lost friend you never met. I know that losing people you love and care about pains someone immeasurably. But, looking at those leaves makes me feel loved in a different way. And sometimes I just feel loved by thinking about all the million things that could have happened that would have kept me from gaining life in this wonderful tree filled world. That might just be me though. :)

I think a lot of people write and post to put their thoughts into words. Knowing what you think is a valuable thing and it's hard to find someone you really connect with when it comes to all the vague stuff. If you do, that's nice. If you don't, at least you have slightly more of a clue what you're thinking if you tried typing it down.

We're built for survival, not as much to find 'meaning' or to deal with this free time we have and finding balance between things is a struggle. I feel I'm not doing what I should be doing as a 17-year-old, because I'm not out getting drunk with friends (I'm not American, lower age limit). Odds are that if I was I'd feel I wouldn't be doing what should be doing as... something else. We have so many choices (and so much we'd have to do to realize them) it sometimes gets lonely and confusing, but other times it's great.

I feel the internet is a luxury we weren't prepared for and are still learning how to use.

Ah, Roger. You have, in this beautiful and insightful piece of writing, turned your curious gaze again on us - your readers - most notably with this pithy question:

Don't you have anything else to do?

Ouch. Well, yes and no.

We have other things that we perhaps should be doing. We are here to avoid doing those things.

To put a better face on it, Thoreau's famous quotation shines a light on your question.

Most men live lives of quiet desperation, and go to their graves with the song still in them."

The first half of that quote is self evident. It describes many of your readers. Perhaps though, I should just speak for myself. It describes me. It accounts for why we come here to read your excellent Journal. Why we seek a salve for loneliness.

Lately though, I've been focused on the second half of that insightful quote = "and go to the grave with the song still in them". It explains why we comment so diligently. Because we are doing our best to let the song out of ourselves. In a forum where we can, and it can be heard by someone.

I personally am self-contained, prefer solitary endeavors, and can entertain myself quite nicely - to the detriment of my family obviously. Lonely? Of course. But I'm only aware of it in group settings.

- I'm am reminded by your article of the blog post that I wrote after attending EbertFest 2010. (click on my name for it). A wonderful experience shared with a couple thousand of your fans/friends, yet ultimately a solitary and lonely experience.

- I spent this afternoon at a NaNoWriMo write-in. 20 would-be writers side-by-side at a restaurant all plugged into our laptops with headphones on, absorbed in our own worlds. At the same time, but not always together.

- Lastly, 1984 in Alaska my wife and I had a 4-way party line. I do remember those!

Alone, yet knowing others are alone makes us less alone.

I have considered myself an anomaly. Perhaps this is a coping mechanism fueled by ego, but when I see my friends with tightly knit social circles, with girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives, yet I am without, I feel abnormal.

I feel bad about this not one bit. I love being alone; I love looking out for only myself. I love the freedom and the worlds I create in my imagination. I love the wonder.

I never feel alone.

This apprehends any desire to seek a significant other. This also allows me to observe and develop my ideologies. This allows me to create.

Perhaps we, who are not alone, do not have a defect but a perk. We lack codependence but seek interdependence -- intellectually, emotionally, artistically.

It is good that Chaz is okay, and will recover.

I phrased it that way because I've never met you, Roger; nor have I met Chaz. To say that I'm pleased seems unwontedly personal for someone I haven't met except, in your case, through your TV shows, your reviews and you blog.

In keeping with the theme of your blog, I am pleased that the people I imagine you and Chaz to be are well (as well as you can be).

You pack more ideas into a blog entry...I'm not sure where to begin.

I've considered posting a comment on your blog entry about Hugh Hefner, or NSFW material. Yet at the end of the day, what have I to say that hasn't been expressed by others, and probably more eloquently? Less didactically? And so I sit, silent and isolated, not sharing thoughts, content to observe and absorb, not to share.

Every post carries with it the assumption that what we have to share is worth sharing it.

I know that my wife has all the risk factors for diabetes and heart disease. I know that it is likely she will die before me. Of course, that's what everyone thought of my parents, and my father died 7 years ago while my mother is still alive.

But I know I've already started mentally and emotionally preparing myself for that shock. I feel I have to, because if I don't, I don't know if I'll be able to deal with it when it happens.

I cited Parke Godwin's "Waiting For the Galactic Bus" in your thread about "Hereafter." One of his characters suffers an epiphany and muses, "That one true love stuff never did much but sell houses and diapers and keep dummies like me off welfare as unwed mothers. There's no more one true love than one true song to sing or dress to wear."

I try to treasure each day with her, because I don't know how long I have. I know she's not my one true love, even though we met after I'd officially given up on finding a relationship. I know I'll be horribly hurt if she dies before me, and that I will be that way for a long time and miss her terribly.

And I try to make her realize every day just how much I love her.

I had a very busy year, last year. I'm a white guy living in Seoul and time moves very fast for me.

I found out that my kidneys were very much like beanbags of kidney stones last October, so I had to take occasional days off from work to go to a university hospital for treatment over the fall and winter months. These places have "Foreigner Clinics," obviously for anyone who isn't Korean.

I would take the train down and walk into the hospital to be met by young pre-med students who spoke English, who would be assigned to lead me around from appointment to appointment. I had no responsibilities to the process.*

It was good to finish the appointments and not return to work, and to be able to meander/malinger in such a great city where I was the only diversity across entire districts.

I was also an unlonely, only child. Time with my wife is a joy but my solitude is the only commodity that I value. We have a newborn daughter whom I enjoy taking walks with, alone, for the facts that she is quiet, cuddly, and a tabula rasa.

*I was visiting family in Northern California when an 8mm kidney stone lodged in one of my ureters did me under. I went to the emergency room at the local public hospital, waited for 45 minutes with the sick and the poor, and was finally taken in for an IV of Motrin and an MRI. Total time for this treatment: 90 minutes, not including time spent in the waiting room. Some weeks later when I was back in Seoul and the hospital bill finally found me, it was for $9,300, split between the hospital and some agency in Colorado (I was treated in California, so WTF?) I didn't even talk to a doctor. My insurance paid for it, but what about the poor folks wheezing and coughing in the waiting room? I received treatment in a Korean hospital every two weeks for three months, including blood work, doctor consultations, IVs, and lithotripsy (pulverizing kidney stones with sonic waves), not to mention being escorted around by young translators, and the total bill was less than $1,500.

Ebert: Say, maybe it's time for another blog entry on Obamacare. See, the experience you just described...the Republicans think Americans would rather die. Which may be their other choice...

"Someone once said the fundamental reason we get married is because have a universal human need for a witness."

That's a very interesting idea. Seems like that is at least partially true. Also true is everyone wants to be understood. The idea of no one understanding you, as a person, is terrifying. Some people think that everyone they come across in life would like them if they'd just understood them. The idea of not being understood bothers me. I went through a period of depression, and contemplated suicide. During that time I acted very strangely. I often think about how nice it would be if someone who knew me during that time would come up to me, and say "I know you went through a tough time then." But no one does, because no one knows what I went through, how I felt. Well, almost no one.

By the way, I now feel the need to google "partyline", whatever that is.

I've sometimes wondered whether "Sex & the City" was so popular is because it fulfills a fantasy of female friendship -- four women who always seem to have time to support each other and have a drink together. I'm in my mid-40s and one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I've never had a close female friendship. I am happily married (no kids), and have acquaintances, and like Roger I usually feel self-contained and have no problem spending plenty of time alone. However, I'm an introvert and have a hard time connecting with people. I can see myself winding up as a crazy dog lady in my old age -- indeed, the truest friend I had was my beloved dog, who passed away two years ago.

This is only the second or third time I've commented on Ebert's blog, though I'm a regular reader. I tend to be a lurker online as I feel I am in real life. I guess something about this entry just resonated with me.

Beautiful as always Roger. Thank you for reminding me about the things in life that should be cherished. As I was reading your piece I recalled the hero from Ikiru, and the loneliness he felt in his last days, but forever affirmed by the moments that matter. Much love and peace.

A Twilight Zone type question that I like to ask people:

Assuming you could have a free 10 years - you wouldn't age, would not get ill, need to worry about food, etc., but no one would be there with you. At the end of 10 years, but no sooner, you would start off back where you started with only the memories of the things you did. Would you take it?

A lot of people will not.

Ebert: I don't understand the terms. I would remember only the 10 years, or I wouldn't remember the 10 years?

This is not a comment about this blog entry. It is a comment about all your blog entries.

No matter what the subject, I love reading them. Playboy, loneliness, crockpots and videogames. I swear, you could write about the sewage systems in Tulsa and I would find it good reading. Please do not take that as a suggestion.

I await the book.

I just fell madly in love with a writer. Spot on, spot on!

I really liked this article you wrote. I have bouts where I feel lonely. I am not sure why I get them and why they leave. Sometimes, it is just moodyness, but then I hang out with my friends or family and I feel good again. Other times nothing does the trick, I go to bed and I feel fine the next day. I am single, 26 and a virgin and some people think i am lonely because of those things. But I do not think that is why I feel lonely at times. I find I can feel lonely in a room full of friends and family. Usually it is when I don't feel like those close to me want to hear what I have to say. On occasion people do ignore me (not on purpose I hope) but most of the time I believe it is just a misconception I have.

There is one time I know I will probably feel lonely. When I am in a large group of people who just want to talk about nothing. I don't understand how people can talk about the weather, and tell boring stories for hours and have a good time. That is usually when I feel truly lonely.

I don't even know why I am posting this other then the fact that I don't normally feel comfortable talking about this feeling of loneliness. I am afriad that people will think I am A: A loser because I feel lonely. B: A loser because I am a virgin. C: A loser because I am single. D: A loser because of all of the above.

Just to end this well. I am overall happy and have great friends and family. I do think I may or may not be less lonely if I had a girlfriend/wife but I also realize 99% of my feelings of loneliness is my own doing. I don't want to rely on any woman to make me feel happy. That would be unfair on her, and would make me lonelier more often.

From a sporadically lonely reader who just typed way too much. I am glad your wife is well. And I pray that both of you live much longer and have a happy and full marriage together.

Thank you for reading what I have to say.

Mr. Ebert, as someone who is currently seeking it, I would greatly appreciate your story or any advice on how you found sobriety.

Oh, and as a lonely person, I find that your blog is an amazing resource to hear from a like minded voice. Thanks!

Ebert: Here's what I know:

http://j.mp/1MyzCH

A beautiful blog Roger. Thank you for writing it. I know of late I've felt quite lonely in my own life. Even though I have wonderful friends and family I can spend time with, I spend most of my time either at work or watching movies. I've been a life-long bachelor and struggled with anxiety and stress for much of my adult life. I've never really gone out on dates, and for a long time, my social interaction was sparse. Over the past few years, I've begun taken proactive measures to battle my anxieties (which have many times led to depression), have opened myself up more socially, and opened myself up more in general, sometimes risking embarassment and ridicule to allow people to get to know me. This has been done through blogs of a more personal nature, some of my reviews of films that I've deeply identified with, as well as with my music. It's been very cathartic, and deeply satisfying, allowing me to express myself more than I used to.

I have always been an introverted person. I rarely leaves the confines of my room except when I need to go to school. My life revolved around the internet and the literature I read. And yet I wouldn't really classify myself as lonely-at least, not in the conventional sense. As someone with Asperger's Syndrome (A mild form of Autism), I find social situations awkward and uncomfortable unless I know the people very well. I have a tendency to say things at the wrong time or talk when I'm not supposed to.

The internet gives me a chance to..."refine" my conversational skills, if you will. I have a chance to write things before I hit "send", and I can delete things I think are inappropriate. Plus, I've made many good friends on the internet, some of whom I consider closer then many people in real life.

I always fail to understand people when they say they are "lonely", as I'm someone who, to an extent, has always been lonely. It doesn't depress me or upset me in any way; it's just the way I've always been. Thank you for this thought-provoking and insightful blog.

(P.S. I have read your reader's comments, and I must agree that you have some of the most lucid and articulate commenters on the internet. It is nice to read this blog's comments amidst the cesspools of stupidity that are YouTube and 4chan.

Mr. Ebert, I read this in the Math Emporium at Virginia Tech, a massive sprawl of 600 computers that exist to let us to math and let us not do math. Do, not learn.

Could you tell me what you got out of your college experience? Because I am not really lonely, but would prefer to be rather than caught up in my Internet Generation's self-sustaning, empty distance.

Please, Thank you, Cordially, Hoping
DB

Ebert: Out of my college experience I was opened up to English literature, became a liberal, learned a lot about journalism and edited the student paper, was introduced to the Theory of Evolution, developed a love of folk music, won a Rotary Fellowship for a year at the University of Cape Town, made some great friends, and launched myself into life.

It would all have been far less likely if there had been an internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEu8DrO9PbY

Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"

"Well nothing can be sadder
Than a glass of wine alone.
Loneliness, loneliness,
Such a waste of time . . . "

RIP, Solomon.

My wife and I met on the internet back in 1994, when it was purely text-based. Distractions were at a minimum, so you had to focus on the words upon the screen.

I was an only child, and a lonely child - never had a lot of friends, and wanted people to understand me on a different level. When I first discovered the internet, and received my first email back from a real person (from Australia! Within hours!), I was hooked - life would never be the same.

Within months, I discovered the concept of a Freenet and was able to access it (Cleveland Freenet) from Newfoundland, Canada, via a super-slow modem. With my modem, and a green monochrome monitor, I connected with people thousands of miles away, made friends and confessors, and felt myself captivated. Weeks after finding this Freenet, I met my wife online, and over the course of months, we visited one another, fell in love, and now 15 years later we're still in love with each other and to a lesser extent, the internet.

Back then, everyone on the internet had something to say, seemingly because it took some effort to get online and you had to really want to be there. Nowadays, everyone is online, yet a much smaller percentage of people have anything on their minds to contribute to any sort of conversation.

So when we find a blog like yours with a tremendously diverse community of contributors, it feels a little like those good ol' days, when everyone wants to be, and deserves to be heard.
After posting quite a few comments to your blog, I will never forget the rush I experienced when you responded to a query of mine- for a few moments, I shared a brief moment of Roger Ebert's time, and the appeal of this is incalculable!

The bottom line, for me, is that the internet, despite all the bells and whistles, is still a place to connect with others, but not necessarily out of loneliness. Rather, it's something of a marvel, that the world has become so unbelievably small, and we all have the potential of an audience.

Lenny Bruce on Loneliness...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TrQxeNEPLo

I haven't commented on your blog yet; it seems somehow apropos that I'm commenting on the post with a discussion of why people post. I discovered your blog a few months ago in a google search for kindred spirits who have loved & lost Steak & Shake. You have an incredible natural touch with your vocabulary, and the comment in today's post about "a universal human need for a witness" really hit home. I'm a confirmed bachelor, and am comfortable with that; until I put thought into the cumulative experiences that form my life, and how I share that with others when there isn't anyone to hold the camera. There's an important distinction to be drawn between desiring a companion and desiring companionship; otherwise, this is a very thoughtful post. Thanks for sharing.

70 or so years ago, one could find the same solace in books, and yet now that kind of loneliness would be smiled upon. And yet now there's the added attraction that our marginalia will be read by the author.

Physical interaction is the best kind, but when have we all been closer together than we are now? Before reading this I got to speak with my mother, who lives five hours away, and then my sister, who lives on the other side of the country. Had I sent letters, I couldn't expect correspondence for weeks, maybe even months. Now I can get feedback within an hour. These options aren't a bad thing, a substitute for something better, yes, but not a bad thing.

After reading this article:

http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world/

I'm just gonna leave this here:

"Here are a few examples of instances where other languages have found the right word and English simply falls speechless.
1. Toska

Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom."

I've worked for years as a model for artists and photographers, and my experiences have given me a window into human loneliness that I never expected to find. The people I've worked with have been some of the loneliest people I've ever met; it was like they pursued art as a way of reaching out to people and to something inside of themselves that they had lost. I'll never forget my time with an aging artist who had been through two painful divorces and had lost both of his children to drug overdoses. He did a painting of me that's in an exhibition in New York right now, and even though I know that the rest of the world will look at it and see something beautiful, all I can see in my likeness are his lonely brush strokes.

I wonder if art (in all of its forms) exists to be the ultimate escape from loneliness for people. I've often thought to myself that no matter what happens or who I lose, I will always have music. For some reason I can't look at works of art without thinking about this quote now:

"It’s a lie. It’s a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully, and all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it’s beautiful 'cause that’s what they wanna see. But the people in the photos are sad, and alone…but the pictures make the world seem beautiful, so…the exhibition is reassuring which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie." (Alice, "Closer")

Wonderfully considerate article. And much thanks for letting us know of Chaz's return to health. With her in anyone's life I can't imagine a moment for loneliness except in her absence. My nephew attended Ebertfest with me on two occassions and dearly loved a few minute conversation wtih Chaz that ended with her giving this nice young man a hug.

Although the internet is often touted as the solution to our social woes, in many ways I've found it's separated us. We are like bubble people now. I remember when people used to talk on trains. Now everybody sits with cell phones, ipods, laptops...no matter where we are, we are "somewhere else", in this fantastic virtual space where people are two-dimensional words on a page. The internet is more lonely, but sometimes it's the only option, because on the trains and planes, nobody is talking. Nobody even looks up from the screen.

My mother always said she be fine in prison, as long as she could read.

I myself have to be in a relationship, if only to laugh with and at someone. Sex too, I guess.

Still, I just murdered half a planet in Halo: Reach all by my onesies, and couldn't be happier.

I was curious if you had read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. It's an examination of addiction and how just about anything can become an addiction from hard drugs to entertainment to playing competitive sports. Reading this entry made me think a lot about that and how one of the major driving things of the novel is loneliness through one's own addiction. In a way, the internet can act like a drug and users can develop their own addictions to it. Check it out if you haven't read it.

Hi Roger,

I moved a thousand miles from home to Chicago two months ago without knowing anyone and without having a job. Since living here, I have not been able to find a job and the only people I have become friends with are my roommates. I go see films at the Siskel Center very often, but people usually go to the movies with their friends and don't like random people intruding on their night out, so it is hard to meet anybody there. To top off everything, my brand new MacBook Pro was stolen from me in a mugging, so I was 'cut off from the world' for a few weeks before I bought a crappy refurbished Dell that is probably from 1994. I had a few people back home that I was able to talk to on the phone with for awhile, but gradually communication has stopped. The internet seems to help at first, but then I run out of things to do and realize that I probably just wasted a ton of time on nothing important. My mind tends to wander to thoughts or worth, like 'What do I have to offer anybody?' or 'What the heck is wrong with me that I can't make my life better?' It seems like it should be so easy. You watch a movie and see somebody who can control a room, like Sean Parker in The Social Network, and think 'That looks so easy. I should be able to do that if I act just like him.' However, I don't know if it's possible to trick yourself into believing you have confidence when you've proven otherwise your whole life. If I could, I would just sit at home forever and just watch the Criterion Collection all the way through over and over, but that obviously can't realistically happen. As much as I want to just drop out of society and forget about ever being in a relationship again, I know that I have to keep trying, even though it kills me inside.

I just realized that I've only ever rambled on like this and told someone about my loneliness probably two or three times ever in my life, so I guess it is true that the internet is a tool to 'confess and reveal.'

Anyways, thank you for this blog I always find a good cry very cathartic, but they come along very rarely. Best wishes to you and Chaz.

Ebert: It took nerve to move here without a job. Jeez. What kind of work you looking for? Maybe we can help you.

I have no answers, except next to the Siskel Center there is a Border's with a coffee shop, and someone who needs to meet you is sooner or later going to be sitting in there reading a book you've read.

Thanks for writing this Roger. I had a rather depressing spell over the weekend, to do with a lady. It does me no good to write about it, I've been through it before and I know how the cycle goes. I did find solace in the internet this time, though; I spent a night on Youtube finding people I admire, and their words and humour basically cured my ills. It's remarkable how quickly human connection can change your entire mood, even if it is through a computer screen.

I really like the line from Lester Bangs in Almost Famous: "That's because we're uncool. And while women will always be a problem for us, most of the great art in the world is about that very same problem. Good-looking people don't have any spine. Their art never lasts. They get the girls, but we're smarter... The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool."

Ebert: Some good-looking people have lots of spine, and need it. Look what Robert Redford and Paul Newman had to put up with.

I haven't read all the comments, so someone already may have mentioned this, but you made me think of Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver," "God's lonely man," like the priest in "Diary of a Country Priest"--except Bickle turned his loneliness toward--no, against--others as a weapon, while the priest swallowed it down.

We romanticize loneliness, nurse it as the sweet pain of melancholy. But it's really just ourselves turned inside-out, the old doppelganger again. Bickle says, "Loneliness has followed me all my life." But this puts me in mind of Satchel Paige's advice about not looking back because something might be gaining on you.

I usually write comments on your sites when I'm alone--everyone in the house asleep or otherwise occupied, or no students waiting to see me at work. It's also when I like to read--and here's another movie line, from "Shadowlands": "We read to know we are not alone."

So we read you, Roger, and each other, "all together now," as the Beatles sing.

Thank you for the insight. You have provided much-needed clarity to some of my own thoughts. "I've never understood this bittersweet narcissism within myself". That is me, in a sentence.

Very heartfelt article, Roger. I could sense in your interactions with Siskel and your movie reviews that you are a very sensitive, thoughtful person, and when I read your piece A Green Field after 9/11 (at http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/08/ten_things_i_know_about_the_mo.html ) I knew you were someone I always wanted to keep up with. I sometimes write on your website, not out of loneliness, but just to correspond with someone that I can relate to like a trusted friend (and I can tell a lot of other readers feel the same way). Keep up the good work!

I am full of words. Sometimes I think in fact that I'm composed entirely of words. My physical self sometimes feels like the illusion. I'm chronically shy in person, but not when I'm writing. I post a comment to a blog or message board and feel I'm communicating more directly than I am with the person sitting next to me at the bar, who strikes up a conversation of superficial "small talk." This paragraph is more a reflection of me than a great many interactions I've had in the real world.

The vast majority of my readers I've never met. I can't even count most of my family among my readership. Hardly any of my friends, except the ones on whom I've based characters, because they're interested in seeing their reflections. I don't think they consider me a real writer. I've never made any money from it. Almost no one has bought any of my stories, which I can hardly give away for free on the internet. All the film reviews I've written have been as a volunteer. And any meaningful discussion I strike up happens online. I don't confuse the internet for real life, but there are times when I get more out of the internet, but it is not the internet itself that is a companion, but the people with whom I interact through it.

I am often lonely, but seldom when I'm alone. I took a day trip to Philadelphia last week (just because), during which I was alone for about 15 hours. My thoughts kept me company. In contrast, I was extremely lonely at times in high school, though I've never been so surrounded by people; I had great friends, but in a school of 2700 students I had a lot more strangers than friends.

I felt lonely during my freshman year of college, when I felt alienated from my roommates, but never felt lonely when I had a dorm entirely to myself in later semesters. Being surrounded by people can be the loneliest feeling in the world, because strangers remind me of the connections I wish I were making.

How amazingly the internet has shrank the world. You, Roger, whom I've read and admired since I discovered "Siskel & Ebert" almost fifteen years ago, are now reading some of my words, which is probably why I put more effort into these comments than I initially intend to when I start writing. Once, you put in bold a sentence in one of my comments, I believe to positively emphasize a point I had made. That a Pulitzer Prize-winner regarded one of my comments as worthy of emphasis was a proud moment for me. I reached out into the ether and made a momentary connection, achieved the validation of being acknowledged by someone whose opinion I greatly value. How much more satisfying to converse in this virtual space than to talk about the weather with the guy at the bar, how much more real it is despite the detached nature of the setting.

Sometimes I miss school. After seeing "Waiting for 'Superman'" I thought, if learning itself were a career track, I'd take it. What I miss most about it is being read. Writing papers often felt like a chore, but to get one back from the professor with praise and criticism (mostly praise, thankfully) felt like genuine discourse. I read a couple of essays and stories aloud in class, and I would relish hearing the class respond, especially if they responded strongly to a part I didn't expect. In a creative writing class I met a woman who liked my work, and whose work I liked. I listened to her at an open-mic night and discovered that she's a terrific singer-songwriter. We bonded over creativity, and now I still keep up with her on Facebook and YouTube and buy her music.

The longer I write this comment, the less I'm sure what I'm writing about. So that I'm not carried out to sea by my streams of consciousness, I'll end this comment here by addressing one of your concerns about the internet: "A danger of the internet would be if we begin to meet those needs without feeling there has to be another person in the room."

I don't think there's anything to worry about there. In the same way, masturbation is no substitute for sex, but we wouldn't want to do without either.

Sorry for being unclear.

You would remember the years. Essentially, would you take them even though you would be completely alone during such period. I have been surprised at how many people would not take this extra free time merely because they could not stand to be alone for so long.

Ebert: Sure I would, assuming I had books, movies, a rice cooker and a place to walk. And a dog to walk, of course.

Hi, Roger. I am very happy to hear that Chaz dodged the bullet and that the two of you will be together indefinitely still.

I don't think your loss of Chaz would really qualify as loneliness, though. I think it would more be like a huge hole in your heart and severe loss. I don't think that's the same thing as loneliness.

Many years ago someone explained to me that affection is something we need just like water, sleep and food. Every day we need some kind of attention, preferably of hug or touch contact, but at the very least of eye contact, a smile or some form of acknowledgement. In the absense of positive affection we can accept negative affection (someone yelling at you or insulting you or demeaning you but still acknowledging you).

I would say that as positive internet contact is better than negative affection, the worse scenario is not for people to thrive on internet friends. The worst scenario is for people to settle in relationships with people who mistreat them and don't love them.

Internet friends and internet contacts are still people. Is it as rewarding as a smile or a touch? Probably not usually, but it's rarely a bad thing either way.

And I'm glad you have both Chaz and your internet friends.

Various posters, such as Brian above, said things like, "I can testify that enormous cities have a way of making you feel isolated, because at some point the sheer size makes it difficult to make real connections."

I don't really accept that it's the cities that are responsible for that. I think feeling isolated in the midst of stranger is self imposed.

Maybe I'm biased that I'm 6' 5" and strange looking and always dressed differently than most people, and maybe I'm lucky that as a youth I was picked on to ridiculous levels to the point that I learned to not only to fight bullies but pick on bullies and defend others, but I always have the feeling of being a presense everywhere I go.

Whether I'm visiting cousins in Africa, or visiting Mexico, or Holland or various states in the the U.S. or just hanging out in Detroit, I always feel my aura extending many feet around me. You don't even have to speak the same language as people in the big city. Eye contacts and smiles are universal. And if you're extra friendly, so is a bow.

Loneliness is in the head. If you withdraw your aura, such as people who for whatever reason are afraid of human contact, then that's the reason for the loneliness. If you feel like people don't notice you, they won't.

You must trust yourself. You must love yourself. And that then gives you the ability to look strangers in the eye and exchange smiles and nods.

The next time someone feels lonely in a big crowd, I say square your back, raise your head, trust yourself and look everyone you pass in the eye. Look at them, and they'll see you looking. Smile at them, and they'll smile back.

Just like you can't get love without giving it, loneliness comes from not giving of yourself to others your own presense.

I feel you. As somebody else who found company in the radio, albeit several years later. The one lyric I grasped onto was by the 80s band Aztec Camera - "they call us lonely when we're really just alone". And I recall once, as a young child, telling my father "I'm bored", to which he said "If you're bored, it's your own fault." I don't know if he was simply trying to be glib, or if he knew he was teaching me perhaps the best lesson he could possibly teach me. Because I took that to heart. I quickly learned to entertain myself. And I didn't need an iPhone, or a working internet connection, or even a television or a book. My brain was enough.

I'm currently an advisor on a website devoted to LGBTQ youth. And I see shades of this entry every day, in so many kids. They're lonely. They're bored. They can't talk to people. They'd rather never leave the house...but they want somebody to love them. They reach out in a thousand ways, but when they get a response, they don't know what to do with it. I once was moderating the "chat room". Ten kids were in there, and every single one pointed out how depressing it was that they were all alone on a Friday night. And I finally said, "You're not all alone - YOU ALL HAVE EACH OTHER." Slowly, but surely, they began to interact. And they began to open up. Because they not only were getting responses, but they were responding themselves. They no longer just needed somebody - they became the one that was fulfilling that self-same need. And it was cheering to see them "get it", to some degree.

It is a different world now than when I was a child. And the problems that are evolving aren't doing so due to the evil nature of technology, but because we continue to assume that nothing's changed. It may be necessary to start teaching kids (directly) things like how to make friends "IRL", and how computer and texting communication differs from face-to-face interaction. Because the stuff that we learned outside the classroom "when you and I were young, Maggie" don't appear to be being learned anymore. And they're probably at least as important (if not more so) than what's going on when class is in session.

I am one of the people mentioned in the entry.

And really I don't think I've ever had a conversation in real life. Usually I try to get into the type of debates that I often get into here on the blog and the people I'm debating usually start yelling and want to tear my head off. So, that's number one; I get to have these debates without someone wanting to kill me: and as I already said, I don't think I've ever had a conversation in real life.

I don't really even have a memory.

I have no memory of my parents.

I have no memory of what kind of life I've lived.there's maybe a few very small moments and they were awkward ones, but there really is no memory of my parents or what the home life was like at all.

I remember when I was at an arcade (at around age 13, after about of having moved into the racist area...I'll get to that point), after when I kind of moved, and there was a girl who came up to me and said she new me, and I gave her a blank look like I didn't know who she was (because I don't have a memory), and she said, yeah, your name's Keith, right? And I just kind of nodded, and she just kind of laughed and went on her way. I desperately wanted to know more, but the moment kind of passed because I guess I don't really know how to talk to people.

Maybe you're wanting me to back up and explain just how it is possible to not have a conversation with anyone EVER.

Well, at very young, I would have video games. Moved. I had I suppose people who wanted to play those where I moved next. Moved. Then I get molested possibly by someone who is supposed to be my best friend and how many times that happened I don't know; I only remember once. But I think there was at least some other older kid too. Get a bit older and moved somewhere else (again) Then I might joke around and act a fool (I'll come back to that); that was as far as the conversation went; I guess that's all that was required. One of my best friends was a Vietnamese immigrant who couldn't speak English. Another one was, well, I don't even really want to say it...but I think he possibly crapped his pants...every day. What kind of conversations would you have with someone like that? He had an older brother and it was him who I kind of would have rather have hung out with. Moved again. There was still nothing, except kind of being the joker. On my first day in school, they made us read passage while sitting around in a circle. I suddenly jumped up and doing voices and acting the part (which made my teacher give a strange face...that kind of performance). Then I ended up being Willy Wonka for an audio performance; I was a bit embarrassed about this, and I didn't exactly know the intricacies and nuances of performances, so I just kind of read the part in a funny, but boring voice. But basically, acting the fool was as far as any conversation went, which all it required was an audience not really a two-way thing. I would be introduced to people, and act the fool. Then I'd go to their houses and we'd play video games or go to the movies, and it all came down to acting the fool. Next made friends with some people who were racists, and to which I'd kind of just sit there and know that indirectly they were talking about me and just think "well, what else am I going to do?...but they'd act the fool sometimes too and it would be universally funny sometimes" which meant...more acting the fool with others who were acting the fool. In fact, a few years before that, like I kind made racist jokes like as soon as I moved into the area...for myself. It was really strange but it just came out, and also drug humor, which I had no idea where it came from, as I knew (or thought I knew) nothing about drugs. To explain what I mean, I had a tape recorder and I was doing the Martin Luther King speech, saying "I have a dream...that all the people of the world...hold on let me do some cocaine real quick." I had a friend who turned out to be evil, who heard this and me and him did a Rodney Kind recording, to which he was liking it so much I was frightened. I was just joking around, but he was laughing maniacally enjoying it way too much. I was just kind of acting the fool, in what I guess was kind of the new material what my new surroundings gave me. But it was kind of like, once you moved into a certain part of Texas, the racism just kind of unconsciously came into me as well as the drug humor. Then I hung out with people who did drugs (which I didn't know for a good while at first). There literally was just staring and no talking. Well, there eventually came a point where there was a semblance of normal where you first meet someone and it's kind of like a job interview. But that lasted like 10 seconds and then I didn't know what to say. Then eventually, drugs (although they'd already been doing them and I didn't really start until about a year after i met them). When that happened it became really lonely then because I would be sitting home alone and they'd be out everyday doing drugs somewhere and maybe they'd come by...to do drugs at my house or in front of the house rather.

there's maybe a few very small moments and they were awkward ones, but there really is no memory of my parents or what the home life was like at all.

I remember when I was at an arcade, after when I kind of moved, and there was a girl who came up to me and said she new me, and I gave her a blank look like I didn't know who she was (because I don't have a memory), and she said, yeah, your name's Keith, right? And I just kind of nodded, and she just kind of laughed and went on her way. I desperately wanted to know more, but the moment kind of passed because I guess I don't really know how to talk to people.

So, we were at drugs.

Well, this one girl liked me in 1st grade who was my sister and step-sister's friend and they tried to pressure me into asking her out (I was 6). That didn't happen. I often sometimes would think about just what would happen if I saw her again in high school (realizing that we possibly might be going to the same one). Then it turned out she did and was a very impressive person. She was open about everything. And this was basically not anything like me. I've been this goofy little "Zelig" motherf*cker my entire adolescent life, but we basically ended up in the same circle of friends, which is really something kind of in a school of thousands of students. You know what's even kind of more incredible is we kind of had the same enemy before we met eachother. On the first day of school, I was lost trying to find my way through this giant high school on my way to the first class of the day. Then this guy walks up to me outside the school and knocks my schedule out of my hand. guess what? Me and him were going to same the class! Then guess what again?! The girl who I was talking about walks by the class, as the door was open, and the guy yells something to her and she yells back "F*ck You!" And he says to himself "disgrace"...because she was asian who liked punk music..and he was one of those asians that feels they have to be a certain way; you know the type. So, it's pretty incredible isn't it? (well, there's more of that later) Well, eventually one day we were just kind of standing in the hall and suddenly my Heart tells me who she is. Although I didn't seem to have memories, my heart kind of did and it told me who she was. And then I hesitantly kind of asked her what elementary school she went to (knowing full well where she went to) and then she asked me and then she realized who I was (although perhaps also already knowing, but being a lady, didn't say anything), and then she literally jumped into my arms kind of and wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a hug. The look on my face over her shoulder said "I'm screwed." I was screwed because I liked her a lot and even seemed to be fated to be with her somewhat, but I was too insecure about my face and my body (hairy and other physical problems such as...) and even have a certain broken body part and was kind of insecure about that as well on top of it being broken. All signs pointed to...sorry, not going to happen. We'd given exchanged phone numbers and I didn't know what to say. She would talk about how she wanted to be "a boulder and not a rock" and also about movies and classical music. Perhaps it's one of those love stories that weren't going to work out anyway if I looked hard enough,but probably all the fault was on my side. She even asked me why the hell I never asked her out. I don't really know how to talk to people basically, and then all the other perceived and actual physical problems. She called me from the airport crying saying she was moving. I then was back to nothing (which I guess is where I always was). I suppose though things got a bit darker, but from her awoke in me kind of God or just that there really are real people out there who are nice but also passionate. I kind of wanted to be like her, but I guess couldn't and still can't. But the passion that was awoken is still there and I try to keep it alive. If it was love it seemed to be fated in the stars, but only so. Either way, it's been infinitely inspirational.

But back to fate.

I once started working as a delivery driver at a place and I recognized that the other driver there was this kid who kind of got gay with me when I first moved to Houston. I didn't know what to do at time, as I didn't know how to talk to people. This happened another time later on, but never mind.

I knew who he was and he probably knew who I was, when we shook hands (although his eyes were shadowed under his cap).

The point of this was that I had a feeling fate was up to something again.

I KNEW that I would see one of the people who molested me (a year or two later, one of my "best friends" molested me....and who knows how many times it happened). And probably just a few months later, my step sister comes and introduces him to me (as if she didn't know who he was)and I was already ready for him. I gave him no expression on my face. He asked me more than a few times, "hey you ever get the feeling that you know somebody" and I angrily answered "no!"

It seems I'm always a few steps ahead of God or fate or whatever.

Hopefully next time I make something better of it when I see it before it sees me.

I'm 19 years-old, and I essentially grew up on the internet. I started becoming an online entity at 12 in anime forums, and before long, I became so attached to the computer that if I'm away from it for a while, I just don't feel comfortable.

In the beginning, I was purely lonely. I grew up with no social skills whatsoever, and I didn't even really understand this fact.

See, what I've come to realize is that similar to how 'you don't know what you've got till it's gone,' you also don't know what you haven't got until you find out. Or rather, until you're convinced.

I wasn't exactly a 'nerdy kid' growing up, at least in the same sense as other 'nerdy kids.' As a gamer and anime fan, I *was* a nerd, however, the thing I've found to characterize most nerds is that they wish they *weren't* nerds. When nerds appear in movies, especially those from decades before this one, they always resent their status as a nerd, but don't have the capacity and experience to stop being one.

I never disliked being a nerd. I had no desire to be like anyone else. I found other people confusing. To be honest, I still do. I have no idea what a normal person's life is like. I've thought about it, and I really just can't picture how it works on a daily basis. I've never been that and never known that, so I never wanted to.

But the one thing I did know is that friends were good to have. I was bullied up through middle school and finally started acting more like a weirdo to get peoples' attention. And I'm talking about nerds' attention, because like I said, I wasn't like them either. I was proud of the things that made me nerdy, so I didn't fit in with the people who were ashamed of it. So instead, I became, as I liked to call myself "that one odd dude." The one who didn't really belong with the people who didn't belong.

In my teen, hormonal years, I got brutally lonely. I wanted love and sex but I still had no idea how to talk to other humans. In reality, I still largely don't. Actually, I know how, I just can't do it - I can't be dishonest in the ways that are necessary. The only way I think I can be friends with people is if they happen to be people who can accept exactly how out-there I am as a person.

And lo and behold, I made those friends. I made some of them in person, and they are close enough to me that I really see them as extensions of myself. As I moved through high school, I recognized the nerds for what they were and realized I didn't want to be friends with them. I didn't want to be friends with anyone who wasn't satisfied with who they were. By the time I graduated high school, I had cut those people off and stopped being a fool for anyone. Now I was only a very real person.

And what of my online life, then? How did it compare? How did it help or hurt? Actually, my online life was exactly the same as my real life. I still wasn't a person who could be dishonest, and I still couldn't relate to anyone I knew. I still purposefully made myself into a character so that people would pay attention to me. I still made a lot of enemies out of people who found me annoying and still couldn't make close friends.

But there's an important difference in how my change online reflected my change offline. The people I became friends with offline were people who either spent so much time around me that they got to know me (my younger brother's friends tended to be like this) or I personally took an interest in someone who was, like me, not a part of any group. My closest friend is someone who didn't know anyone and was a shut-in who I'd managed to talk to just before he had to leave school due to a medical condition, and if I hadn't been so interested in him, we never would've become friends.

The internet, however, worked the other way around. The people who became my close friends were the ones who saw me through the act and the showmanship. They understood what kind of person I was really and they got interested and wanted to sort of mine my depths to find all the greatness that I was burying under the layers of stupidity and loneliness.

These people are what really pulled me through, because they validated me until I could validate myself. The people I knew physically, I was the one pulling along. The people I knew online were the people pulling me along. And they weren't people I could've met otherwise. I live in Virginia - my best online friends are a 32 year-old Filipino, a 20-something Californian, a lot of older guys from around the world, and all of these people found me and paid attention to me and said 'what the fuck are you doing, you have the potential to be so awesome if you'd quit making yourself worse.'

I came a long way in the last 2 years as I tore down wall after wall. The most important moment of my life was when I admitted to my parents that I'd been in the midst of a suicidal depression and they got me help and later got me back in school. Since then, I've boiled my life down further and further to what I want out of it.

The irony therein is that I've actually pushed more and more people away, but I've become less lonely in the process. Whereas I used to feel like there were people around me, but because they didn't understand me, we weren't really friends, now the only people around me are people who can basically tell me what I'm thinking.

I've grown more reclusive. I don't post as much on my blogs, I don't read as many other peoples' blogs, I don't spend as much time with my friends, and I don't talk to anyone I don't care about. However, I've never felt less lonely, and my interactions with others have never felt more meaningful. I'm in the middle of writing my first novel, I'm more passionate about my anime and manga obsession than ever before, and I'm all-around just proud of myself all the time.

I don't know what you can take from all that and what it means in relationship to this post, but I hope the perspective is helpful.

Apologies for having not responded to your blog for a very long time, sir. But to see you post such a topic that I've had on my mind lately, I felt it seemed like the right time to "extend my consciousness" out there to anybody who will listen.

For a long time, perhaps since high school even, I have not be honest to the people around me (or not around me): not friends, not immediate family, not trusted educational advisers, and certainly not coworkers, and most of all, to myself.

But very recently, we've seen the news on TV. We've seen the politicians spread terrible lies about each other to get election points. We waited in anticipation for the results: is our country going to be a red one or a blue one?

And we were witness to a string of gay youths killing themselves because they were victimized simply for being brave enough to tell the world who they were. Following in their wake was an online "It Gets Better" campaign. It made me hopeful to see such a life affirming message getting put out there, and through the online magic that is YouTube no less. I'm almost 25 years old now and decided that it was time to just admit to myself that I was bisexual. I'm just as attracted to men as I am to women.

There is a flipside to your finding of good company online. I've been a part of the same online game for a few years now and have found surprising acceptance. The reception I got from the people I told has made me decide to tell my best friend who is currently in Germany. My plan is to tell him when he comes back in January.

Yet as we can find good company among those who we only know through text, we can feel them alienate us as well. Part of my realization of myself comes from the fact I've always felt the same sting when confronted by people who carry misconceptions about people like me. I may not know some random person in Iowa, but that does not make it hurt or alienate less when they call people like me sexual deviants or, worse, wish death upon us. Words online can be just as powerful as if it were somebody picketing outside on my lawn. At least I can call the police on the latter.

I recall one instance where I called somebody else out for using the word "retarded" to insult another. The reception I got was one in which where I was told that it was an online forum (or was it a blog? Something along those lines) and that readers should be more thick skinned and not take something they read on the internet so seriously.

I say all this because, just as the internet has become a fine tool to reach out to others, it has also become one of the ways in way evil people out there in the world can come into your home just to alienate you further. Indeed, I never felt so alone lately as when I read about the Arkansas School Board member who wrote on his Facebook that he delighted in gay people dying of AIDS, how he would disown a gay family member, and how he wants all gay kids to kill themselves. It was only compounded by blog comments defending his right to say what he did, even when it is something so indefensible.

Being lonely is not something I want as a person, and yet it keeps happening to me all the same. I have too much living to do to be bothered by it right?
As a 19 year old who has just taken his first big step into the world, let me just say that you are an inspiration to me. You are passionate about your art, life, in a way that puts a lot of people to shame. I own 2 volumes of your great movies collection, and I am currently the leader of the film club at my school, which allows me to choose, and seek out, films which I haven't watched yet (I just watched "This Is Spinal Tap", last friday, and I love it to death). Though I do disagree with your statements on videogames, I respect such opinions, because I have a lot of opinions too, and if anyone's gonna respect my opinions, then I better be respecting others's (Grammar fail) opinion too.
With all of that said, I do suffer some bouts of loneliness. I crave human companionship, but having a disease like Asperger's inhibits my social abilities to the point where I become awkward around people without wanting to be awkward. This in turn causes feelings of alienation. I know I sounded encyclopedic there, but that's the way it is.
The internet, music, Films, Videogames, have all been there for me to cure my sadness (Admittedly I used to have a severe addiction to videogames which probably didn't help much with my social interactions), for in these enterprises has always been a small core of humanity that allows me to stare in awe, "People made this, for the enjoyment and fulfillment of others, all they ask for is some small compensation for the joy they bring to the entire world".
The internet though, hasn't been as helpful as the others in helping me enjoy my life (and to cure loneliness). I've had my heart broken over facebook many times, have had anonymous ragers troll me and hurl insults. That said, It allowed me to discover music (through the magic of youtube,metacritic, and Rolling Stone), the joy of film (Thanks very much rogerebert.com, Metacritic, and wikipedia), and the joy of knowing that I can connect with anybody, anywhere, anytime.
I am trying my best to live my life to the fullest, and I will continue reading your reviews. All the best to Chaz and You
Sincerely
Kyle A

Ebert: Anonymous ragers. What do people get out of it when they try to hurt or insult someone online? I just don't understand it. Their comments have no relevance except as a sad expression of their own misery.

Roger,
Great essay; huge bonus points to you for your referencing of Travis McGee and including Julie London.

I can certainly empathize with your sudden wave of fear about loneliness during your wife's illness. I married nine years ago, at 33. I often tell my wife, "I didn't marry you because I was lonely." And that is the truth; I was once a busy bachelor, and co-habitation never appealed to me.

Last spring and summer I slept alone in a motel room a few nights while my wife was in the hospital - she's dealing with breast cancer. The same feeling came over me; a stereotypical, universal feeling, I guess. A terrible fear to have, and I never anticipated having such a fear until those nights actually came.

Perhaps one doesn't know the fullest depths of loneliness until one experiences true companionship.

My best to you and your wife -

Mr. Ebert: Lovely and haunting. I have always felt alone in a family of seven. It could just be me. I enjoy traveling alone. I am going to Yosemite tomorrow for photography. It is my temple.

Thank you for sharing your soul. For some reason, you make me think of poetry.

I didn't get to University of Illinois until 1974, but I remember the fish sandwiches at the pool hall! Only on Fridays as I remember. But my big food memory is Spudnuts, donuts made out of potatos.

See, this is what the Internet does for me.
I'm alone on a Saturday night, want to listen to Stephen Sondheim's "Saturday Night" CD but I own too many CDs to find it (cue to find new homes for what I don't need!), read Mark Evanier on Stephen Sondheim's new book and he has a new blog entry pointing here, skimmed through the comments here, reading the boldfaced parts which I enjoyed and found a reference to UofI haunts! Can't think of a single fellow UofI student that I would be trading reminiscences with in person, but I'm still part of that community for life for good or ill.

Do you know they skydropped Papa Del's pizza here to California a few months back?

I am, quite frankly, a lonely person. I have my small group of friends, who I see a couple of times a week; and my online friends, which is another story entirely; and that's it. I occupy myself with film and music, and occasionally I write, but that doesn't change a thing. I'm reminded of a Scorsese anecdote, where he mentions a foreign film student who came to him seeking advice for his loneliness. Scorsese told him to put it into his work, and the student returned, telling him, "It didn't go away." Scorsese said, no, it doesn't go away, there's no magic cure.

You bring up a good point but I don't really believe you can go by something as simple as the Internet. The internet may be a modern marvel but it is also a flawed one. It will never replace true conversation.

There are a lot of folks on the internet who write a lot of things. But you can never truly know a person inside and out until you've sat down and listened to them. And even then you still won't really know. In a way, writing is a kind of facade, an act of concealing true motives and identities. Much like acting on stage or even being in a room with unfamiliar strangers.

We all do this in our daily lives. Sometimes out of necessity but most of the time because we've fallen under the accepted conventions of everyday interaction. There are just certain things in public that you don't do, impulses that you deny yourself such as insults, bold statements towards the opposite (or same sex) or maybe even a running wild in the middle of the park.

The point is we're all a little lonely from time to time but more importantly; I believe that sometimes people deny themselves the luxury of companionship because they're too busy making judgments on others. We all do it, not talking to certain groups because of the way they look. Not sharing in the company of individuals due to education, experience, dress or vocabulary. I myself think I have a rather advanced vocab for someone in my early 20s. Using words like expostulate, laborious, and rhetoric and languid in regular everyday conversation. But big deal.

There are of course those charismatic people who can light up a room when they just step in the door. People who create a glow that makes individuals fall on their every word. There are those people throughout history who have had those gifts. And even then, they might have hid something from the public eye that only their closest friends would know about. There are also a lot of jerks in the world who insist on being jerks all the time. And I suppose that is their right. I've found it is always better to be nice. That doesn't mean you have to let people walk all over you.

But words like anything else are simply things. And people are more important than things. Indeed, people do deserve our attention because they are what we know and who we have; to keep us company on this little planet of ours. Dogs and cats are different because they can't really think for themselves. Although many would argue that they are smarter than people in many ways.

I don't believe that people on the internet are necessarily lonely. I believe that there are intelligent, outgoing, smart people out there who engage in little distractions but don't allow those distractions to distract them from other distractions that are more distracting.

Ice cream for instance. And golf. Golf is fun.

I'm glad to hear Chaz is doing well. That was momentarily alarming.

I don't think I've ever known someone who's never been lonely. I'm not lonely often anymore, but used to be from time to time. My wonderful girlfriend and my puppy are always keeping me company. Once upon a time when I couldn't stand being in my own skin and itched to be around someone or someones, I would look at webcams. Not pornographic webcams, the ones that are on the side of buildings, bridges, and other structures that overlook famous landmarks and cities around the world. There used to be one site called "Around the World in 80 Clicks." The cams were live and I could see people walking around, lights going on and off in the windows of buildings. It somehow made me feel like I wasn't alone. Just knowing that people were out in the world, awake, living their own lives relaxed me. Now, I live in the city. I can just look out the window and watch the city breathe.

Your blog topic is very bold and honest. I am not sure loneliness has ever been solidly addressed in a fashion that is searingly honest, and in a way, unashamed. I have a the type of personality in which I hate to be alone, and find myself lonely in a sea of humanity at times. Perhaps it is because I continue to seek a life that matters, and when I lose my compass, that is when loneliness sets in.
I feel loneliness is an emotion of desperation. The sting of loneliness, if unrelenting, can lead to irrational thoughts and behaviors. In my isolation at various times of my life it has led to thoughts of suicide.
Fortunately those times are past -- but I do wonder how many people are quietly desperate and one step away from a decision that could lead to tragedy. Too many to mention, I fear.
Thank you for your voice, and the courage to say what many can't utter.

It is amazing and almost fortutious that this entry appeared to me at this moment. Loneliness is a battle that wages within me every day of my life, but I am never sure which side I want to win out. It is a Saturday night in a college town, I am a prototypical 24-year-old college student, yet while the rest of my peers are filling bars and hanging in packs around town, I am inside my apartment, finishing the rounds of great films I had saved on my DVR over the last couple of days ("Doubt" and "L.A. Confidential"). A yearning is in me to be with my "friends", yet I do not find solace or warmth in giant groups, consisting of mostly coworkers, acquaintances and friends of my friends who I do not know. A night on the town boils down to me standing around, beer glass in hand, talking to no one save for random lines of conversation with a person. In my mind, I would rather be at home, in solitude, cozing up on my futon with great films (or like the poster above me, video games..I did say "prototypical college student", right?) rather than to be in an atmosphere I do not belong.

My friends always tell me that it's easy to be social, to simply TALK to someone, but if that is considered "easy", then they do not know what it is like to be me, or people like me. I think of the sequence that opens "The Social Network", in which Zuckerberg has a conversation not as an act of social interaction, but as gamesmanship. I believe that's a similar fashion to how I approach conversation, only if Zuckerberg is Fischer when it comes to verbal chess, I would be a novice who tries to move a rook in the vein of a bishop. Ten things enter my mind at once, and it logjams so I come out spewing several things in a stammering, unconfident manner. This is a vital reason I hound message boards and blogs online, because my writing is much more eloquent and coherent, as is my "voice". There is confidence because I know what I am doing, as opposed to face-to-face chit-chat with someone.

I am not some young hermit or someone who aspires to be antisocial, but there are times when the best company I prefer is myself. Five hundred miles from home, I have friends, but no one I feel a great companionship bond with. I reach for ideas to why it is I am this way, whether possibly Asperger's or ADHD, but I have so far resigned myself to the fact that it could be I have not found the right combination to how conversation works in a comfortable, non-awkward manner.

You are right in your assessment of people who are lonely for the sake of being lonely. I have no answers. Neither do my friends nor parents. My situation is far from dire- I can carry a conversation if it is not started by me; I am cordial, selfless, and friendly; and I am happy with how my life has transpired so far- but I do wonder if I have it in me to change my route in society. It is a Saturday night in a lively college town, and I am holed up in my apartment, half of me wishing to be "part of the gang", and another side happy to stick it to everyone that I can quite do this on my own, and not feel miserable. But the misery ebbs and flows; like you, I seek out places of food and drink for solititude, only there is a crushing emptiness when it sinks nobody is facing me. No one is thinking what a mystery I am, not a soul notices I am even occupying space.

Which brings me back to the magic of the Internet. Through the silence of text, I can convey someone that is not completely connected to my real-life persona, but the ideal person I should be, confident and articulate. It is through this mindset, as well as great influences such as youself, that has inspired me to become a writer. Because while loneliness is a troubling and isolated feeling at times, at other times, it is directly in my comfort zone.

"It is my firm belief, and I say this as a dictum, that all these tools now at our disposal, these things part of this explosive evolution of means of communication, mean we are now heading for an era of solitude. Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal - be it fax, phone, email, Internet or whatever - human solitude will increase in direct proportion."
-Werner Herzog

I feel incredibly fortunate to have developed a reliance on literature before the internet became so prevalent, yet I feel an unhealthy draw to the internet, where hours can be sucked away and I for the life of me can't recall where the hours were spent and have little to nothing to show for them, whereas if I had been reading I'd feel much better about those lost hours. There is some false hope I have in the internet (that it'll cure my discontent? give me that bit of inspiration--a kickstart--to get me doing what I'd like to be doing: writing? or maybe just lull me into complacence?), that some incomplete part of me will finally find satisfaction and I'll head off into the horizon, yet this hasn't even remotely happened and I have to seriously doubt ever will and maybe I won't cure myself of my internet addiction. In Search of Lost Time Vol. 4: Sodom and Gomorrah sits half-read, waiting for me to bury myself in it, yet here I am writing about how I waste time on the internet.

Maybe one day I will be able to write something. The words won't disperse and dissolve I desperately grasp for them and the amorphous idea of writing a story will take shape and congeal into a reality. Until then (and very likely after) I'll waste more time on the internet, searching (conscious of the hopelessness) for some remedy for whatever unnamed (to me at the least) ill possesses me. Now...to reading: where I never feel alone (as long as it's a good book).

Somehow, I started thinking about some relationships when I felt lonely IN the relationship, and being ALONE was BETTER than feeling lonely that way.
Glad your wife's OK.

Thank you for this. I spent the majority of my adult career as "store starter" for some major retailers. I would go to a place, set up the store, hire and train staff, and then go on to the next one. The shortest "deployment" was three months, the longest a year. No one could understand how I could love a job like that, but it was WONDERFUL. In each new place I got to be anonymous - no running into exes or people who knew me and had rigid expectations of me. I could experience a new city (Chattanooga, Norfolk, Clemson...), make new friends (some with whom I still correspond)and with every move I had a new opportunity to discover who I was in a different context. I craved the autonomy, the freedom, the opportunity to see what it was like to live in different places. It fed my soul. I was a child who played well by myself, and I still prefer my company to most others. There is SO MUCH you can do and learn when you are unencumbered. Now I look back fondly at those years, from the vantage point of a caregiver to two aging parents to whom I'm devoted, but because of those circumstances I'm anchored in place. The downside of a youth spent exploring and wandering: no husband or children. My life choices developed me into a solitary person who allows others in, but only temporarily or in frequent, small doses. Most of the time I'm content with my solitude. At Twilight Time (I prefer the Nat King Cole version) I have regrets, I feel the absence of a companion, and I grieve. Thank you again for this. It touched me (only connect!).

Wow! Thank you for sharing this. I just wanted to let you know that the "toothpaste for dinner" cartoon made me cry. Can you believe it? I guess something inside me needs to come out.

Another insightful essay. It is posts like this that make the net a part of my life. One will never find reflections like this on TV, and rarely on radio. And if we were reliant only on the printed page, it likely would find a much smaller, if no less appreciative audience.
The net has become a staple of my life because it lets me discover people I would never otherwise encounter. That is a two-edged sword, since it makes it easier to find the vile and loathsome as well as the inspiring. Still, it's worth sorting through the mundane and despicable to find a piece like this. We all have our close circle of "real world" acquaintances, but the net is a great reminder that the scope of human experience is so much broader than any of us could ever personally know. I, for one, am grateful for the voices and insights it lets me share.
You're always a pleasure to read, but this piece and the community of commenters, is exceptional. Thanks for this.

Dear Roger,
I have been reading your blog for a while but have never commented (not related to my state of loneliness or otherwise!). I enjoyed what you wrote and how you brought what you felt to a crescendo in the ending paragraphs. I have had a couple of gripping fears mostly during my academic days, but they existed memorably enough for me to understand what you say here.
Nevertheless, (and this might be my Indian sensibilities) aren't we mixing loneliness and aloneness? I would consider them two starkly different states of the mind with often similar perceivable characteristics and environments. While aloneness might be desirable by many, loneliness can be overwhelming to most.
I loved your observation about education - "It prepares you to keep yourself entertained." but not necessarily through a job, right?
Thank you for writing well. Readers certainly don't read your blog out of loneliness. That would be like saying I read Turgenev because I am lonely. Perhaps it is the joy of being alone with thoughts distilled across time and space read in our own voice giving it the semblance of our own thoughts well articulated.

Of course, here is another use being made of the net.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11576592

Kevin Klawitter wrote, "I'm a loner by nature. Unless I know someone well or have something in common with them, I can find interaction pretty difficult."

You're not alone in that feeling, Kevin. I think some of us simply weren't born with the chit-chat gene, also known as the small talk gene. We're wired instead for observation and synthesis.

I think loneliness sets in when we fight our nature and internalize shame for being different. We put pressure on ourselves to fit in, make ourselves sick with worry that we're too much or not enough of something and others might notice. For me, it boils down to a fear of feeling shame.

So I choose to embrace who I am. I choose to feel confident in being the strong, silent type (not the accepted norm for women, btw) who can whip out the occasional wise-crack or wise comment. I would much rather sit in a crowded night market in Asia than dish about the latest gossip or purse. I would rather have a quiet, funny conversation at the periphery of a party than be in the midst listening about a round of golf. I choose to be genuine to who I am, and with that choice comes confidence, peace, and happiness. And what this loner has learned is the damnedest thing - those are the qualities that attract people.

I've been suffering from loneliness for quite some time now. To put it in the best film analogy I can put it, you know how in Weekend at Bernies all the people partying at Bernie's house never stop to think about whether he's dead or to help him?

I feel like Bernie.

There's this obscure little Necronomicon of a book called Welcome to the NHK by Tatsuhiko Takimoto, I've read it seven times and the more I read it the more I discover I may have been at one point in my life a low grade hikikomori. A hikikomori is a person who doesn't leave the house much for six months or more.

I am very lonely and afraid right now, university isn't quite what I hoped it to be. I thought I would find people who were like me but all I found were people who were different. I am twenty years old and my brother has already had three relationships with women before I even had one.

I feel inferior to the rest of the human race who seem to find it so easy - while I struggle to stay sane and even contemplate putting pen to paper or taking photographs for my art degree.

None of my friends remember me over summer, they all have jobs and girlfriends and are powerless to help me. The worst part isn't that I can't find friends by myself, the worst part is that my oldest friends for all their experience are so inept in my aid they can simply do nothing.

I am twenty years old in the prime of my life, but summer always terrifies me because it's the worst possible time of the year for my loneliness. My brother shuns me because I am too needy, my parents despair because I am helpless to help myself sometimes.

Please help me find some answers.

Regards,
Jacob Martin

Ebert: Art. Photography. That's what you do. Throw yourself into it. Don't think of yourself as a loner. Think of yourself as a soloist.

Pretty shabby advice, I know. But focus on what you do that you love.

Roger, just last night my husband and I met you and your wife at your book signing. The whole way home we talked about what a wonderful relationship you two have and how if anything impaired either of us, we hoped that we would fair as well as you and Chaz. You two made us feel all warm and fuzzy, thanks.
As for being lonely, I hope you never truly experience it. My own fleeting moments of loneliness are only in my childhood, post surgery and unable to leave a bed for weeks. A good book was the best remedy, I just had to make sure it was always within reach. Longing for something you can see and remember but can't grasp is my definition of loneliness.

For some reason, reading the blog entry and the comments, plus Roger's responses, have made me cry.

I think it's something to do with the subject matter, and that this is a real, civil exchange of personal thoughts and feelings - not a characteristic you'd associate with the internet. Something tells me that this entire page is going to be immortalized long after we're gone.

Roger,

First comment on your blog. The usual thanks for all your writings over the years applies.

It's a strange coincidence that you should choose to write about this right now as my wife and I just had a discussion about being alone a few days ago. She joked that I was waiting for her to die so that I could be alone again. While not true I do find that I yearn for more "alone time" as it were. Not at the cost of my wife's life of course but it would be nice to have some time without the burden of the constant company of a family with 3 kids under 5. Lol.

Prior to meeting, both my wife and I had come to terms with or accepted in our minds and hearts that we would be alone in some form. While both of us had lots of friends and an active social life, long term relationships didn't seem to pan out. While I can't accurately state my wife's feelings on the matter without a fact check(lol), as for myself, I figured, I'd lived decades without a significant other and I'd survived so...I guess I could deal with it. Of course just like in the song where the moment you realize you have something great, it gets taken away...the moment you don't care anymore about love is the moment it finds you.

I think that your particular experience of loneliness and that of those of the commenters above differs from what the common discourse on the topic seems to be. Usually loneliness is discussed in terms of a sad and depressing and/or leading to suicide state of affairs or it is discussed poetically by some great author or songwriter (Brian Wilson's "In My room"). Perhaps its because most people who are writing about loneliness are doing it..ALONE...and not in a message board setting like this. I don't know about everyone else but this particular form of discourse...intelligent comments by the everyman on this subject...has been much more elucidating and effective.

The particular comments that stuck with me were the joys of traveling alone and the false sense of community that the internet often creates. Facebook is, as usual, the best example I have approx. 200 or so "friends". Most are business networking types from the horror film and fandom business that I dwell in. The others are actual friends. Funny how seldom the real friends who I am dying to hear about actually post vs. the horror/shozbiz/fringe people do. One friend, who isn't really a friend, (I just have this person as a friend because I need to keep an eye on them)...is constantly posting about all the deals they allegedly have pending. The reality is this person is barely getting by through various low level(internet porn chat) freelance gigs and phony psychic fraud(!). This person constantly posts about how much is going on and how much in love they are with their spouse. There's this real sense of "pay attention to me! Love me! Want me! Need me! I'm important and happening!" which is not unique to this person. There are a lot of people in the everyday world who clearly need to read about other people's experiences so maybe they can come to terms with loneliness in their own lives.

I would go so far as to say you should consider a book on this subject with a series of your writings mixed with comments/blog essays from your readers like those above. I think it would be very helpful and cathartic for a lot of people...possibly even (given your stature) MILLIONS of people. Just a thought.

Thanks for reading. The usual apologies for grammatical errors, over use of "..." and run on sentences applies.

Sincerely,

Ken L

I am alone. I am alone in the sense I have no real relationships with adults anymore. I have my three kids, but my breakup with their father was so painful in so many different ways I have decided to just be alone, with them.

Even as a child, though, I isolated myself. I had an unhappy childhood that turned into an even more unhappy adolesence. I surrounded myself with books and music ( and later, films and good TV). It's telling that my single favourite Beatles song is "Eleanor Rigby".

I generally dislike being around people. I find "people" as a concept to be noisy, cruel, and dishonest. This is clearly an extension of how I viewed my immediate family as a child. Why does a six year old go and hide in a bedroom with the door closed and listening to the Kinks records she borrowed from her friend's older sibling? Why doesn't she play with the neighbour kid, the one who once shoved her so hard of a swing that she still feels like she's pulling sand out of her palms? Why doesn't she hang with her family- the meek, quiet mum who never stands up for her when her father is screaming in her face that she is stupid and a waste of space because she didn't fold the towels correctly, while her brothers sit and watch whatever cartoon is on, having defeated her in a democratic vote? My childhood is really not that much different, I think, than others of my generation. We were born in the 70s, before helicopter parenting became the rage and the corporal punishment aspects became distasteful. My father had a nasty temper, and as horrible as the spankings could be, the yelling was worse, because he would always call me names.

I have always wondered if the victims of bullies- both the ones at home and the ones they meet out in the world- adapt to being alone as a way to cope. I'm certainly more distrustful of people now, especially after my breakup with my ex. But when faced with the idea of my children growing up and leaving me, I'm not afraid of being alone. I'd like to find someone, but I no longer worry about it. I see the chance to travel where I want, since I will still only be in my early to mid forties when my kids are all grown. I see the chance to do the things I was wanting to do at twenty, only at forty, with more financial security and with a greater appreciation for what I am witnessing.

It's not that loneliness never comes up. It does. Adult conversations are rare for me. That's where the internet comes in handy. I have four friends I have cultivated relationships with. These relationships have left the web and have turned into gifts sent across the world and hand written letters that express the same sentiments in a more personal way. The web has actually facilitated the four relationships I cherish most in the world. It was our choice to take them and expand them. We are all currently plotting a trip together ( difficult to arrange, especially when two of us have young kids). I was able to make these friends in the place where I myself feel the most comfortable- in my own space. They have done more than any friend I have had in making consider leaving my comfort zone. They encourage me to write and be out there more while considering my own personality. They know I'm prone to crippling depressive episodes and I am generally a curmudgeon ( I prefer misanthrope myself to curmudgeon). It's hard for me not to be completely honest about these things, as they tend to creep into my day to day correspondence. They know about my migraines, my love of tequila and cheetos, the fact that I have had a ten year crush on Jason Segel that is inexplicable until you relaize that I really value funny above all else in another human being. I'm actually more honest with them becaue they are so physically far away that I never actually have to see the looks on their faces when they are disppointed in me. Which I'm sure has happened at some point, even if I have yet to be disppointed by them.

And I must say, in the end, the only people I want there are my children, the people I love more than life itself. Because they will make sure I will die listening to The Kinks, who were my first love. That's how I want it to end. Gwen, Aislinn, Emma, and the Davies brothers singing "Picture Book".

Ebert: Kirsten, I went to look through your blog. You are so engaged in your interests. So open about your ideas.

I think you have it figured out about right. You're going to be a hell of a woman in your 40s.

I really hope i'm not late with this, but Wooow, Roger. This post just hit me right in the heart!

I admit, I find it hard to communicate with people sometimes on a personal level, since i've never really been very good at expressing myself, so I end up spending a lot of time on the internet. I go on a lot of messageboards, and sites like twitter, because its the only way I know how to talk to people, without feeling like i'm getting lost in translation...

I can completely relate with you, too, about being alone, but not lonely.Sometimes,I feel more at peace by myself, just thinking and watching,than I am being with a group of people. I do have to admit, though, that I still feel lonely sometimes. I've really been that lucky in the romance department (i've never really had a boyfriend, and i'm 23, which is kind of a damper on things), but I still can't really figure out what I want for myself, let alone what i'd want in a relationship, which only makes it worse. Having my family and friends, and my time alone, does do a lot to help me, though, and I know how important love is in all of its forms.

Anyway, I should probably get off my soapbox now.
I really do hope that Chaz is alright now, and wish her all the very best as she recovers. Also, I want to thank you, again, for a fantastic post. I will definitely have to check in more often in the future!

This is beautiful, Roger. I've enjoyed your movie reviews for many years now, and your Great Movies series is responsible for opening my eyes to many masterpieces I wouldn't have seen otherwise and exponentially improved my taste and appreciation for this art. But it's your writings about other things lately that have moved me in wonderful ways. I cannot express the profound gratitude I have for the voice you've chosen to share with us in recent months. Thank you.

Thanks so much for sharing these feelings with us, your readers; sometimes I feel in twitter that we are like a group of 3,4,5 years old kids: we are all talking but not engage in conversation, not reply; in twitter, as adults we are, we listen to one another, different to the kids.

I enjoy solitude, not all, but a lot in relation to extroverted, more gregarious people; in the Keirsey/Bates personality test came out only 1% of population shared my type;I enjoy people and social situations but in small doses, only when dancing I could forget time.

Beautiful piece of writing. Hope Chaz is already well, my best wishes.

When I'm lonely, which is often, I watch movies about lonely people. My favorites are Taxi Driver, Five Easy Pieces, and Leaving Las Vegas. These are obviously not the most cheerful of film experiences, but they help me because they reassure me that there are other people like me. Not that I'm psychotic like Travis Bickle, or sucicidally alcoholic like Ben in LLV, but on some level I can relate to those guys and feel for them. I'm more like Bobby Dupea, Jack Nicholson's character in Five Easy Pieces. That is, I usually feel out of place and uncomfortable no matter where I am or who I'm with. At bottom, I feel like no one understands me (cue weepy violin music here), and at age 44, I'm past believing anyone ever will.

I could never say anything like this to anyone in real life. Thank God for the Internet.

Hmmm. Am I lonely? I do like the Internet as a supplement to my in-person relationships. One thing I'm clear of: The loneliest I have ever been was when I was in a bad marriage. Two, actually.

Heartfelt and thoughtful post. Thought-provoking. Thanks! And congrats on your sobriety.

Roger,
I bet there aren't too many of your readers who are my age (51) and remember having a party line! Here in small-town Saskatchewan, we still had them in the 1970s. I remember "our" ring: two long, one short.
-Kate

EricJ: (although where's Tom Dark when you need him?)

Here I am, buddy! Sorry I'm late! Was out rationalizing for some needy inarticulates! Whattaya need rationalized? You just let me know and I'm there! Lemme talk to Rodge a sec, tho', okay?

Y'know Roger, you've whacked us all with some expansive feelings in these blogs, and you knocked people RIGHT out of their seats with your presentations at Ebertfest, but I've still gotta say: the one line that made my heart twist in my chest was when you wrote you couldn't take those walks any more.

So I devised a plan. I was going to come to Champagne-Urbana, snag you somehow, and we'd just take a walk. A walk. Avast, talk-lubbers! We're going to just shut up and take a walk!

But you were engulfed with people all the time. My plan was foiled. Foiled.

Spent 10 years alone. My social life was the length of one cigar a day plus espresso at a local coffee shop, or a visit with my precious old centenarian.
Had I a way of restricting things to that, rather than the infrequent business meeting, would've been even happier. Even loved the solitary hours of being a janitor in the wee dim of night.

Would walk to either thing and back. The solitary trudge itself was most precious. How I loved it. How Roger Ebert, a stranger beyond the vapors of thought and things electronic, made my heart twist when I read he'd been deprived of it. But now, I hear, you can, and that harmonious rhythm that connects the lot of us has returned some.

As some have hinted here, the most painful of lonesomeness is when you don't have it when you need it.

One of the best cures against loneliness, in my opinion, is someone to care for. It doesn´t even have to be a woman or a man. From the moment I decided to give two lovely cats a nice place in my home I never felt lonely again. They care for me too - and I think that I´m much more easygoing with my human friends because my cats and me, we live such an idyllic life together. They can give you strength in dark moments, these cuddly and calm animals.

Your blog reminded me of a scene in a Steve Martin movie, "The Lonely Guy" (which can be seen here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXCVIXXNghw) with Steve shouting from the roof looking for his love and then other guys on roofs nearby start chiming in -- funny stuff!

I began to read this fascinating blog entry yesterday morning before work. I didn't have time to finish, but was looking forward to returning to it in the evening.
Near the end of my work day I was stung by a bee (for the second time in eight days!!) I am extremely allergic to bee stings, so for the second time in less than 2 weeks I found myself in the ER, lapsing into anaphylaxis as the doctor and nurses fought to stabilize me.
So there I was, in the same room in the same ER, one week to the day after my last visit, staring at the same bright lights and feeling intense loneliness. I was so afraid, not of dying, but of dying alone. This seems to me an extremely irrational fear because in the moment of death we are all alone, yet I so wanted to see a familiar face.
When it was time to be discharged the nurse asked the same question she had asked on my previous visit: "Will someone be staying with you tonight?" A week ago it sounded like a taunt, last night it sounded like a rebuke. I had to muster all of my courage to say "I will be alone" as I thought of my distant parents, my recently separated wife who moved out of the country, my son who is with his mother.
I returned home last night tired, weak and feverish, feeling more alone than ever. I fired up my laptop, and this blog entry is the first thing I saw. I have always been fascinated by peoples' need to search for meaning in what I see as random occurances. I think we tend to interpret the events of life based on what we want to see, to think, to feel. Well last night I found myself searching for meaning. Why did I suffer two life-threatening bee stings in an 8 day span, and why in my moment of most intense loneliness did I find your words on that very topic in front of my eyes?
I did find solace in the words of your readers, whose own experiences helped put my own in perspective. Regarding the internet and loneliness, I think the net has the ability to both assuage and feed loneliness at the same time, in a cycle that keeps bringing people back for a type of contact that may be genuine, but is still quite simply not enough.
I have internet friends, and many of them I do indeed consider real friends, some in other countries, who I've never met in person, and may never meet. My ability to have meaningful, face to face (well, cam to cam) conversations with a 60 year old man in Myanmar and a 40 year old woman in Peru on the same day is something that was impossible just a few short years ago. McLuhan's global village has become a reality with the advent of the internet.
And yet, there is just no substitute for the immediacy of genuine human contact. A few weeks ago a close female friend, and a friend for whom I have strong feelings, caressed my face as a parting gesture when we were saying goodbye. It was spontaneous and heartfelt, something she had never done before; her fingers lightly traced their way across my cheek, finally stopping in the dimple on my chin. That gesture had a deep impact, and still has relevance today. I can still feel her hand on my face. Real human contact fills the hole of emptiness in a way the internet never can.
Having said that, I am grateful for the ability to have experiences like this too, to be moved by the stories of other people. And to be able to correspond with you, Roger. Your words have been a part of my life since I became a regular reader of your reviews in high school, over 20 years ago.
To everyone out there who is trying to ease loneliness solely through the internet, I suggest the following. Volunteer. Go give a couple hours a week at a local senior center, children's hospital, food bank. You may be amazed at what a little human kindness can do to fill the emptiness inside.
Peace and love,
Steve M.

Ebert: I think that's good advice. To feel needed is good for the soul. Some people stay in isolation and feel useless. They might feel better if they were being counted on.

It's also possible that touches on our relationships with pets. They depend on us totally, and are eternally grateful and loving to us in return. Dogs, anyway. Cats not so much.

Glad to hear Chaz is doing well. Maybe one of these days you'll write a blog entry about how the two of you met? :)

I think I have the opposite problem...sometimes I worry that I'm not lonely enough. I enjoy my alone time. And what if one day this content with my so called independence fades and I'll desire more interactions with people, but by then it'll be too late?

I've been living alone in a foreign city for the past half year, and have felt truly lonely only once. And I often think to myself, shouldn't I be feeling MORE lonely? Sure, I go to work everyday and interact with my coworkers, but shouldn't I be craving deeper relationships? But I find that I'm perfectly content being on my own, reading and eating at my favorite neighborhood restaurants, spending Saturday nights walking alone through this crazy city, past strangers I'll never see again. And I'm happy and at peace...but then I worry, should I be so? Maybe it's because in the back of my mind I know I'll be going back to "real life" aka the US eventually, where friends and family and messy relationships are, and so I cherish this rare opportunity to be truly alone. But not lonely.