All The Lonely People

There are over 7 billion people in the world today.

The average woman speaks 20 thousand words a day.

The average man speaks 7 thousand words a day.

144.8 billion emails are sent worldwide daily.

145 billion texts are sent worldwide daily.

130 million books have been published.

By age 60 the average person will have read 560 of them.

All those words.    can't  you  just imagine them flying through the atmosphere  like billions of tiny drones buzzing from ear to ear, mind to mind, human to human, human to animal and, some would insist, animal to human.    kind words, sad words, happy words, congratulatory words, angry words, positive words, negative words.  words that take on a life of their own, growing, reaching outwards to entangle more and more people till they are unrecognisable from their original intention, a many headed hydra.

Yet......we still feel alone    In the west we are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness.   Gloucestershire have drawn up a loneliness map showing clusters of people who rarely have social contact (read the full article by clicking address below) and are encouraging other councils to do the same.   they tend to be over 65, living alone, no car, low income, health problems.   scary.......i fit the scenario minus 2 years.   

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3032384/Loneliness-maps-used-help-solitary-people.html

But there's a difference between being lonely and being alone.   I am mostly alone, apart from the cat, but i'm not often lonely.   there is too much to think about, too many letters to write, too many movies to watch, too many birds that entertain, too many of those emails to send to lovely friends, too many of those 560 books that i haven't yet read, too much garden to tend,  to be lonely, except...... 

.........at night.    It is lonely in the early hours when there's  too much pain  and it feels as though the whole world is asleep......except me..... and  there's a limit to how much cocoa and toast one girl can consume in a night.    so maybe Gloucestershire could create an online solution by linking people all round the world who could email each other during a time zone that fits their needs.   an insomniac in Australia could chat with a lonely housebound lady in Aberdeen over her lunch.   jeni in Hexham could email Haiti and say goodnight to an online friend.   the world has shrunk so much via technology that with a little imagination none of us need feel alone.