Lonely hearts

There's constant talk of an epidemic of loneliness, of hordes of people feeling so lonely and isolated it's affecting their mental health and even causing premature death.

This seems to me a wild exaggeration, falsely depicting a routine emotion as something catastrophic and overwhelming. Okay, so you feel lonely, You may feel lonely quite often. But is that such a problem? If you're a resourceful person, you simply acknowledge that feeling and then find ways of enjoying your own company and not pining fruitlessly after social contact.

That probably sounds glib and self-satisfied to some. They'll say I don't understand how painful and miserable feelings of loneliness can sometimes be. I don't understand how important company is to some people and how empty they feel without it.

But if people are pining that much for company, of course they're going to end up miserable because 24/7 company simply isn't possible. Even if you have a partner and children, they won't always be around. If you've never developed enough self-reliance and self-enjoyment to disperse feelings of loneliness, you're in for a lifetime of emotional gloom.

In the end loneliness is just another feeling like sadness or helplessness or embarrassment. You find ways of dealing with it so it doesn't become a millstone, a liability. Expecting other people to come along and solve it for you is unrealistic. You have to draw on your own resources instead of thinking the answer is somewhere else.

I'm lucky in having a partner who provides me with constant company. But even before that, when I lived alone in a dismal bedsit, I don't remember feeling lonely that much. I had many ways of amusing myself and I didn't yearn for someone else to be present. I liked my own company.

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness" - Maya Angelou

Pigeon holed

Someone suggested the other day that the label "eccentric" was out of date, that the people we used to call eccentric would nowadays be diagnosed with a range of mental health problems.

A recluse would be identified as agoraphobic, a hoarder as having OCD, a social clod as having a personality disorder, and so on. They'd all be neatly pigeon-holed by therapists and given a suitable course of treatment.

Well, I think that's absurd. Of course there are people who're eccentric, meaning strange or unusual or wacky, and to reduce them all to mental health categories would be dehumanising nonsense.

It denies the full richness and uniqueness of their identity, as well as implying they aren't just strange but psychologically damaged.

I'm sure we all know a few individuals we would call eccentric - because of their odd clothes, or opinions, or way of talking, or domestic habits. But we wouldn't dismiss them as mentally ill, we'd just see them as a bit dysfunctional, not quite all there.

Attitudes to eccentrics have changed though. A few decades ago people would have enjoyed being seen as eccentric. They would have revelled in it, and tried to be even more outlandish. People like Screaming Lord Sutch, Kenneth Williams and Su Pollard.

But nowadays most people find the label embarrassing, almost a liability. Even if they're privately as eccentric as a pink banana, they take care not to show it but to pass as a normal, unobtrusive citizen. Only if you know them well do you realise they're nutty as fruitcake.

Which means it's hard to think of any contemporary eccentrics. Grayson Perry is about the only one who comes to mind.

But there are plenty out there, lurking behind the grey suits and the sensible dresses. Just doing their thing and trying not to be diagnosed.

Pic: Emilie Autumn, the American singer-songwriter