We’re well into the Digital Age and chronic loneliness hangs over us like a dense fog. Many times this year “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles caught my attention, and each time I was struck with a feeling that existed long before the song was written in the mid 1960s. The feeling has lodged and twisted itself into each new development of the twenty-first century. Not to mention, it painted much of the world bright red in 2020.

The feeling is loneliness, so clearly personified by the words and melodies of “Eleanor Rigby”. If you haven’t, give it a listen. It’s the kind of song that sticks to your gut and leaves a residue there. It’s beautiful and dismal, familiar and strange.

The song’s debut was pretty transformational. In 1966 it spent four weeks at #1 on the UK charts, reached #11 in the United States, and was nominated for three Grammys. It was part of the Beatles’s evolution from a mainly rock/pop act to a more studio-based experimental band. Often described as a lament for lonely people or commentary on post-war life in Britain, it has an appeal that reached well beyond the traditional rock audience.

The song’s chords are mainly staccato with melodic embellishments by a classical string ensemble. The lyrics are bleak and explicit. Microphones are placed close to the instruments to produce a sound that is raw and vivid. The result is that when you listen to it, the song scratches at something inside of you.

How does such a somber song become number one on the pop charts? Though it was far from the first pop song to deal with depression and loneliness, it made ripples throughout the world. It continues to have that effect today on anyone who unearths it by intention or accident.

In a 2018 interview with GQ, Paul McCartney describes how the song was based on some elderly women he knew in his neighborhood growing up. He mentions one woman in particular that he used to visit and go shopping for. She and the others gave him the embodiment of the lonely soul in the song.

“Maybe the loneliness made me sort of emphathize with them. I thought it was a great character,” Paul explains. And so he wrote about a woman who picks up the rice in the church after the wedding, and who never really gets the dreams in her life, as he says.

This song points to a timeless crack in the human condition. And although loneliness today is amplified by things like increased use of social media, loss of empathy skills, or a literal worldwide pandemic, its branches come from the same roots as the elderly woman lamenting the losses of World War II in the mid twentieth century. The connection fascinates me and draws me to the song in the best kind melancholic way.

Loneliness is actually a perceived gap between someone’s desire for social connection and their actual experience of it.

McCartney portrays Eleanor Rigby as a pretty stereotypical loner. Withdrawn, isolated, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. But it’s important to remember that loneliness doesn’t always coincide with isolation. In fact, people have described feeling as lonely as ever among friends, within groups, or in marriages. Loneliness is actually a perceived gap between someone’s desire for social connection and their actual experience of it. Depending on the individual, this can result in low-grade unease or full-blown depression.

Tons of movements claim to help cure loneliness. Medications, mindfulness apps, beer commercials. People are knocking on ways to combat inner discontent in a world so terribly disconnected at the level of human touch. Many experts attribute the growing loneliness of young people to their excessive social media use, which may hinder the development of real-world social skills needed to build close friendships. Leading U.S. psychologist Sherry Turkle is one of them.

Turkle argues that loneliness is skyrocketing with the rise of digital culture. Digital conversations are an amazing development – they’re filled with innovation and cool emojis, and they certainly offer a mode of connection. Time can effortlessly lapse between stimulus and response, a recluse’s dream. But looking closely, such conversations tend to lack depth. They can leave a feeling of emptiness that may have otherwise been filled by an interaction with attuned reciprocity, a little risk, and room to build. But if we haven’t had ample environments to practice these interactions, could you blame us for wanting the easy way out?

Obviously the rise of technology isn’t the only culprit for our growing loneliness, so the remedy isn’t as straightforward as revamping our use of social media. What’s really missing is engagement, the fostering of close social bonds, the piecing together of belonging. That’s why traditional efforts of reaching out to the lonely may not suffice. Our encounters to curb loneliness can be pleasant, yet they’re often fleeting. It’s all about going a level deeper than becoming un-isolated.

Once we acknowledge the complexity of loneliness, perhaps we can look to more effective remedies within reach. According to Psychology Today, things like tuning to the creative arts, using social media wisely, or giving it a full seven minutes to allow a conversation to develop is among some of the ways we can tap into that hard-to-catch engagement. It’s an investment, and pieces of the solution may need to be customized.

The Beatles ask of all the lonely people: where do they all belong? Maybe the better question is how do they all belong? I’m not naïve enough to prescribe an answer, but I do know that quality relationships matter. If the yearning for belonging hit so close to home in 1966, as it does today, there’s no doubt the question is one of utmost importance.

Like the song, there’s still an elusiveness to belonging. I get glimpses of answers in my own work as an advocate for mentoring, social and emotional learning, and social dot-connecting, but there’s a lot more to learn. Loneliness isn’t new, and isn’t going anywhere. The question at hand is therefore: do we have the wherewithal to acknowledge this unavoidable human condition, to learn from it, and keep pushing forward?

The story of Eleanor Rigby was unresolved. But perhaps that leave the rest of us with more questions to pursue.