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OPINION | Loneliness: reflection for Easter | CNN

2021-04-01T18:52:44.016Z


A few days ago at a work meeting, a prominent Colombian businessman asked me my opinion about the crises, about the obstacles. I feel that this leader had a deep concern about the conception of “how difficult” that young people have today. Your question made me reflect on suicide and loneliness. | Opinion | CNN


Editor's note:

Roberto Rave is a political scientist with a specialization and postgraduate studies in International Business and Foreign Trade from the Externado University of Colombia and Columbia University in New York.

He also has studies in Administration from the IESE University of Spain and is a candidate for the Master of Business Administration from the University of Miami.

He is a columnist for the Colombian economic daily La República.

He was chosen by the International Republican Institute as one of the 40 most influential young leaders on the continent.

He was an advisor to the Congress of the Republic of Colombia and the Mayor's Office of Medellín, and founder of the Libertank Thought Center.

Follow him on Twitter.

The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author alone.

(CNN Spanish) -

“According to international studies, one in two people will have a psychiatric disorder sooner or later at some point in life.

We speak of more than 3,000 million people.

80% of the world's youth suffer from insecurity and shyness.

More than 1.4 billion human beings will develop some type of depression.

Towards where humanity is headed?

Does this not surprise you, dear readers? "

The meaning of life, Augusto Curry.


A few days ago at a work meeting, a prominent Colombian businessman asked me my opinion about the crises, about the obstacles.

I feel that this leader had a deep concern about the conception of “how difficult” that young people have today.

Your question made me reflect on suicide and loneliness.

Figures from the World Health Organization, prior to the pandemic, show that “800,000 people commit suicide each year, taking into account that there are more suicide attempts.

In addition to this, suicide is the second leading cause of death in the 15-29 year age group and 79% of all suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries ”.

Something is wrong in our society.

Perhaps it is worth internalizing the words of the great Colombian poet Estanislao Zuleta in his essay "Eulogy to Difficulty":

“Poverty and the powerlessness of the imagination are never manifested so clearly as when it comes to imagining happiness.

Then we began to invent paradises, lucky islands, Cucaña countries.

A life without risks, without struggle, without search for improvement and without death.

And therefore also without deficiencies and without desire: an ocean of sacred jam, an eternity of boredom.

Goals fortunately unreachable, paradises fortunately unexistent".

MIRA: Is there a need to create Solitude ministries after the covid-19 pandemic?

The speed imposed by the virtual has upset the concept of difficulty and merit in society.

This has important implications for the way you cope with life and its frustrations.

Adding this component to the imposition of virtual relationships on physical contact, a number of diseases have been awakened in humanity that have to do with loneliness and its implications.

"Carol Graham, who wrote the Brookings Institution study" America's Crisis of Hopelessness "and is the author of several books on happiness and hopelessness around the world, told me that an average of 70,000 Americans who die annually for “deaths from hopelessness”, and that the figure may have almost doubled to 130,000 during the covid-19 pandemic »writes Andrés Oppenheiimer.

In Japan, the Ministry of Solitude has just been added to its governmental structure, while England, already in 2018, when it was governed by Theresa May, had entered this new institution.

These days the Catholic world lives Holy Week.

It is a moment of reflection for more than 1,300 million people in the world and under the current situation, it is worth asking: What is happening with humanity in the historical epoch of greater abundance, scientific advances, overcoming the basic needs of man?

Why are we facing this moment in history with more deaths from diseases associated with loneliness and with a higher suicide rate?

Some answer can be found in the statement of the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, paraphrasing the poet Rabindranath Tagore: “History has reached a point where the moral man, the man of integrity, is giving up more and more space almost without knowing it to the commercial man, man limited to a single purpose.

This process, assisted by the wonders of scientific advance, is reaching gigantic proportions, with immense power, which causes the moral imbalance of man and obscures his most human side under the shadow of a soulless organization ”.

LOOK: Psychological anguish and feelings of loneliness caused by covid-19

Perhaps the answer is also to face the reality of our fragility, to be more aware of the false autonomy that has been exposed by the pandemic of deep mental illnesses caused by Covid-19. Perhaps we misdirect that generalized indicator of "success" that subjects us to clay referents and who forget the importance of difficulty in society and the importance of humanism as a guide to achieve inner tranquility. Perhaps the response to this emotional pandemic should support its solution in the message that Pope Francis leaves us in one of his homilies: “Hope is what gives us peace in difficult moments, in life's darkest moments. Hope does not disappoint, it is always there: silent, humble but strong ”.

Source: cnnespanol

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