In visual arts, lots and lots of artists, especially in the movements of romanticism and Realism, have tried to depict loneliness and it's effects on normal human beings:
Mostly you see desperate and tortured faces painted on canvases, as if this condition is hopeless and lackluster, but one painter is special for me and that's EDWARD HOPPER. Because he does not depict loneliness or sense of depression as this inevitable destructive force that cripples us all, like Goya did back in his days, or some realists did in their works. I think Hopper shows us, that loneliness and overall condition of unhappiness is a choice of ours. He has a lot of paintings, where there is a character placed in a building, surrounded by huge windows frames. His characters look completely drained, but in all of those paintings, the window frames are not covered, they don't even have glass put in them. As if there is an escape, but the character does not really want to save him/herself. He/she does not want to be happy in the long term.
Slavoj Zizek, modern philosopher has the same view about happiness. in one of his videos, he brings an analogy of a married man, with a nice circle of friends, great job and overall good life, has a mistress. This man really loves the woman he has affair with and wishes that his wife leaves him. And one day, dreams come true... He gets a divorce and goes on to live with his mistress, but eventually the man realizes that the love for his mistress faded away. This "love" only made sense when he had a wife.
So, should we always be in pursuit of happiness or dreams, if we'll still end up lonely?.. I think the answer is yes, however futile everything might seem... Loneliness is not something one should fear... It is something, that must be embraced.
There is a painting by Hopper called; Room in New York. A man reads the newspaper and a woman sits across the room, playing notes on the piano. For some, this might seem as a very pessimistic canvas, but for me it is full of hope. Yes, both the man and woman are lonely, alienated, isolated from each other. But they both have each other, so they can share their pain. Pain of loneliness... The most ancient curse of mankind.
