We are connected in more ways than we ever thought possible, using technology most of us couldn’t have imagined even ten years ago, but we are increasingly more alone than ever before. Why are we so alone? Is it wrong to be and to feel alone? Is loneliness a new thing, invented by us and our machines?

I know there are the obvious things: we are spending more and more time working alone, trying to use technology to simulate “socialization,” all of us staring into the blinking camera light in our quiet rooms and kitchen counters and dining tables and the only free space in the room just beyond the bed (aka my “office”). But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I don’t know about you but there are plenty of times when I feel very alone even while I’m surrounded by people, too.

This gets even murkier when I think about the values with which most of us were raised: independence, self-reliance, pulling yourself up by the bootstrap, etc. They are all telling us one thing: go it alone, because that’s what adults do.

So, what does it mean when you’re going it alone and can’t shake the feeling of failure for feeling lonely?