Symptoms of a lonely person

«Where Need-love is felt there may be reasons for denying or totally mortifying it; but not to feel it is in general the mark of the cold egoist. Since we do in reality need one another ("it is not good for man to be alone"), then the failure of this need to appear as Need-love in consciousness in other words, the illusory feeling that it is good for us to be alone is a bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because men do really need food.»

C.S.Lewis, "Four Loves"

After reading these sentences, I could immediately correlate myself to them.  Many months ago I found an interesting thing in me; I can work every day and not even notice that I might be completely lonely. This feeling has somehow disappeared. I feel like I'm wasting time by having a talk with strangers or even with friends that doesn't lead to action. I need to do something, help someone, to be creative. That's what pumps life into my soul. In this tireless pace, one can easily lose track of the people who come and go from his life. The point of life is to produce as much benefit as possible. So, if there are people who are indifferent to my kind of benefit production, I just leave them be. And what is a friendship if it's not the support of each other's effort to be fruitful? That's how I thought for many months of my lonely but truly happy and productive journey.

C.S. Lewis showed a different side of the coin. He basically said that my psychological state is abnormal, that I have to be thirsty for friendship. If I would look deep inside me, I would agree with him. God has created people as social beings. The closer one to God, the more he wants to be with people, even with those who dislike him. And, the whole idea of the church is to be in communion. We are in need of each other's attention and love. We would spiritually die if we wouldn't have somebody by our side to pray for us. So, the "need-love" is a highly important factor of how well we are doing in life. There's nothing bad in being dependent on social interaction.

However, in my case it's really difficult to change. I don't have a desire to work on this matter. That's probably how people with no appetite feel like. Even more, I want to isolate myself as much as possible to allocate my focus and time to the work that I do. I might increase my communication activity if I would see something positive in this for other people. As funny as it sounds, but when I see a person whom I irritate for any reason, I try to leave that place. Not because I'm angry at that person, but because it's better for me be there where I'm needed most. That what my true thirst is. I'm in "need-love" for the people who truly need me.