More people live as single than ever before. It is a feature of contemporary Western lifestyle that is not going any time soon. Roles are less and less determined by gender and thus relationships are evolving. Forming a lasting covenant between two people who love each other takes longer, and achieving the right balance between self-fulfillment and self-giving requires a great deal of patience and imagination. People tend to marry later in life too.
Obviously there are friends, activities and hobbies. In the age of frequent, low-cost flights travels are easy to organise on one’s own and can be shared on social media with countless followers who are not exactly company but a portable community of a sort. No amount of relations, travels and distractions however can spare us the times of loneliness – in the evening after work, during weekends, when we are ill. We can become very good at managing loneliness, we can even enjoy it, and among other ways of coping with it, we develop the habit of talking to ourselves in a more or less constant inner conversation. I am not referring to the stream of consciousness or thoughts common to all human beings but to the many instances when we say things to ourselves, sometimes seriously, other times humorously – we console ourselves, indulge in self-pity, rehearse the way we should have reacted in such and such situation, vent our frustration. This inner monologue may be a significant part of the day of a single person.
