When I was very, very young, I once made said to my parents that I was glad I lived with my family, because if I lived all alone in a big apartment in a city, I

When I was very, very young, I once made said to my parents that I was glad I lived with my family, because if I lived all alone in a big apartment in a city, I would feel very lonely. And I remember - this is one of my most vivid early memories - that my father stopped what he was doing, sat down, and explained to me that someday I might find myself living in that kind of situation. Even then I could tell this was very personal to him - like he'd been in that situation himself. And, he told me, even if I found myself living 'all alone,' and even if I thought I was in a place where no one cared about me, or thought about me, or even had contact with me at all - I wouldn't be. He told me that there would always be people all around me, so I'd discover, if I looked around, that people just next door, people just a few feet away from me, were always right there, communicating with me on a certain level. I only had to pay attention. It's nice to have that sort of confirmed by this study. Because of that impression, it's always made sense to me that this is true; cities are interconnected systems, and every member is dependent in some way on every other, no matter how solitary that person may think she or he is. I think we've built up a lot of mechanisms today whereby it's easy to tell ourselves that we're very lonely; all that's needed to remove that sensation of being alone is a simple observation of the basic fact that we're constantly and continuously interacting with the people around us, even if it seems like we're not.