“Loneliness isn’t the problem.
It’s the space where you find out what actually matters to you.”
An Unexpected Detour
I wasn’t planning on going far.
In Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, there’s a water village — Kampong Ayer — across the river from where I was staying.
The boat was just supposed to get me across the river, a crossing that takes less than 2 minutes.
After the “where are you from” and “How long are you in Bandar” greetings, I mentioned the proboscis monkeys, and the driver said he could take me out to see them. An hour and a half, maybe two. He’d give me a discount. Although I had barely enough cash for the way back, I said yes anyway.
Somewhere past the small talk, we shared about ourselves. He was one of ten kids. I’m an only child. As the eldest son, his father taught him to drive a boat when he was 10, and he’s been doing it ever since. I told him that I run a Telehealth practice and have solo traveled to 47 countries over 5 years.
He paused, taking that information in. Without any particular setup, he gazed up and said, “That must be lonely.”
I took a long beat.
Then responded, “Well, yes. But I’m used to it. It’s fine.”
I’ve sat across from clients and asked that exact kind of question — the one that moves past what someone is saying to what they’re actually feeling. And here was a stranger, from a completely different culture, doing it to me.
In that moment I felt simultaneously seen and completely exposed.
My instinct was immediate: close it down. I didn’t want to be seen as someone to feel sorry for. I was traveling alone, on a boat with someone I’d met ten minutes ago — it wasn’t the time or the place. But the reaction was already there. And I’ve done enough of my own work to know that a reaction like that — before the deflection, before the “it’s fine” — is worth not moving past too quickly.
The Emotion, Not the Circumstance
Loneliness is one of those emotions with weight, depth, and real complexity.
There’s a difference between being alone and feeling lonely — loneliness as a state, and the experience of isolation. They’re not the same things, even though we often use them interchangeably.
At its core, loneliness is an emotion — experienced with sensations that we often label as discomfort and pain.
Here, we’re not talking about the circumstance. Because there are times when you love being alone — we all need alone time. Loneliness happens when you’re choosing your own direction, it happens in a crowd, it happens on different scales because it’s a human emotion, and the meaning behind it repeats itself in multiple situations.
You’re only feeling loneliness because you’re aware of it, and because connection matters to you. Even surrounded by people, when there’s a mismatch between what’s true for you and what you’re experiencing — that’s the price tag. And when you’re disconnected from yourself, that is truly being alone.
The person you’re always with is you, and when you’re disconnected with yourself, that is truly being alone.
The Price Tag
It wasn’t necessarily a choice to be alone — it was more like there are things that you do that lead to a specific consequence. Not consequence exactly, but it’s almost like it’s just the nature of the work. Was I going to find someone who was willing to travel with me for five years? It was supposed to be five months and turned into five years. Was I going to wait for someone else to build their own business so we could do it together? Life is shorter. I want to do it now.
Everything has an opportunity cost. That’s just what choosing means. The loneliness isn’t a punishment — it’s just what comes with the direction you picked. And you get to decide if it’s worth it.
Society tells you success is money, achievement, relationships. And in some way it is — because a lot of that takes work. And when people reach that, they deserve to be celebrated. You deserve to pat yourself on the back and say, hey, you did a good job. You don’t minimize your achievements. What we’re saying is when society or the people around you create the list of what is good or bad, what’s right or wrong, and when or if you ever decide to say — there’s a boundary to which I pursue it because I like it, and it’s a sense of achievement, it gives me meaning — that’s when the list starts to cost something different.
You’re not looking for love. You’re looking for the stamp of approval.
But when you seek external validation, at some point you lose the sense of fulfillment of who you are.
Without the anchor, you feel untethered.
The In-Between
When you start to change, you start to pursue things that are separate from the people around you. When you start to split, you start to change — it’s lonely because it means you say no to social activity.
When someone makes a comment about how much money you make and all of that, you encounter judgment, and in that moment you may feel very much alone because you feel a sense of rejection or otherness. That’s a natural response — in that moment, that is what’s happening.
But if you catch yourself in the moment, push back against that voice — “I know this is uncomfortable, but does this mean I’m now going to go back to a life of exhaustion, dissatisfaction, and simply saying yes even when it’s not what I want?”
This is the moment you decide between moving forward, or going back to a life that no longer fits.
In that moment, you’re choosing to live a certain value. You’re choosing a version of yourself, and that can be lonely.
Sometimes loneliness is a sign of growth or change. Because when you’re surrounded by people and you no longer relate — there’s a moment where you’re letting go of that community but maybe you haven’t found the new one yet. It’s like being half out of the water and half still in it — the in-between is part of the process, not a detour from it.
It’s not that you don’t have the community — it’s that mentally you’re still adjusting to a new way of life, a new way of thinking, and you may not fully connect to the new group or idea yet.
The in-between can feel like failure from the inside — like you’ve lost something without gaining anything yet.
And sometimes a change is temporary. In that moment, it’s important to pause and just think — what is this loneliness actually about? Instead of grouping it as uncomfortable, and I don’t like uncomfortable, and therefore I’m going to go to the easiest familiar thing, which is old patterns.
Every discomfort is sometimes a poignant decision. And that is a moment to decide. Every emotion has a story — usually we choose to stay with it, we choose to leave or avoid it. It’s the deeper meaning associated with it that you’re choosing.
Alone Without Being Lonely
The opposite of loneliness is connection. And you can feel connected even if you’re alone — just like you could be in a crowd of people and feel the loneliest you’ve ever been.
Sometimes you’re in nature and people get this sense of connection and awe. Sometimes you’re not alone because you’re with your thoughts. When you’re writing, writers feel a sense of connection with their characters. People feel it in music.
Sometimes the problem isn’t more people. It’s almost like you’re with a stranger when you’re on your own, and you feel disconnected — and that distance is what you’re actually navigating. Sometimes the problem is that you need more time alone to get to know this person.
It Follows You to Work
Emotions just show up in every part of our lives. Sometimes we think of loneliness as this image of being at home, very personal — because it’s an emotion with such weight to it, because of the pain or discomfort. And sometimes you see the workplace as clean and professional, with no room for vulnerability. But of course it shows up in organizations — loneliness is a unit of feeling, it’s not isolated or separated.
The workplace tends to present itself as a separate register: professional, clean, not the place for the weight of personal emotion. Loneliness especially gets coded as private, too heavy for the office.
But in every business, in every industry, there’s a set of norms — vocabulary, rules, the understood logic of how things are done. And there are moments when someone in the organization — a leader, anyone — chooses to move differently. To say something true in a room that has learned to prefer comfortable. To prioritize something that doesn’t fit the existing logic.
When you choose to go against the grain, there’s always a moment of loneliness. Not because something has gone wrong. Because something real is happening.
That moment is a signal. The same signal as the pause on the boat. The question is whether you’re willing to hear what it’s pointing to, or whether you close it down and say it’s fine, you’re used to it.
Are you going to acknowledge this — knowing that it’s part of the path you’re on — and keep going?
Or does it feel like too much?
Every discomfort is a moment of decision.
What the Emptiness Gives You
Loneliness is a moment of reflection. And loneliness is a byproduct of something greater.
There’s also a lot of societal norms and expectations around it — surrounded by friends, being popular, you don’t want to be that loner.
But there’s something beautiful about loneliness, because it’s just like the desert is beautiful sometimes.
In the emptiness is the space for you to find yourself, and a space to think. In loneliness is where you can almost create — because it’s like a blank slate. You can choose to add people to it. It’s the room where you can feel grounded and safe to exercise your freedom to choose, because you’re not crowded with the opinions of other people.
Freeing yourself from the expectations of others is an uncomfortable process, but the moment right before giving up is a decision: Do you want to go back to a life that no longer fits, or will you choose yourself — and what truly matters to you?
Loneliness is sometimes the price tag of a path worth taking. Sometimes it’s the in-between — the necessary space between one chapter and the next, before the new one has fully come into focus. Sometimes it’s a signal that you’ve drifted from yourself and more company won’t close that gap.
Loneliness is just the cost of choosing something real.
Not a punishment. Not evidence that something went wrong. Just what it costs — and only you get to decide if it’s worth it.
Loneliness isn’t the problem. It’s the space where you find out what actually matters to you.
And sometimes it’s just where you are: on canoe, in the middle of a river, with a ways still to go.
That’s not a problem to solve. That’s just what the passage looks like.
Discover more from TheXponential | Biyang Wang
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