Yasenevo district, Moscow. Photo by Alexander Akishin

If you think that, the topic of loneliness in the big city is beaten, you might be not that lonely. Unknown

In Moscow every minute counts, they say. People here treat your suggestion to postpone a meeting to another day with understanding and unconditionally believe you when you say that you’e very busy. You believe it yourself by saying, or–what is more likely–by typing it once again.

Sometimes I thinks that it’s all an illusion, and in fact we’re not that busy, as it seems. I bet we could easily find a time for all the meetings that we cancelled during, let’s say, the last two months. Couldn’t we?

Once I shared my own method of defining justification for live communication with my amigo, Alex.

So, I compare the benefit of a meeting (emotional, physical, material – no matter) with the volume of work on the current project I would hypothetically manage to do during this time. I put it all on imaginary scales and make a rational, as it seems to me, decision. And you know what he said?

“Same shit!”

That is why we, chatting literally every day, never see each other. That, and also because Alex dwells in the north part of the city and I dwell in the south. And obviously, we are both too busy.

This method assumes that every time, in sacrificing a meeting, we are making a significant contribution to the development of our current projects.

–Why haven’t we become rich yet, Alex?

–Why do we cherish solitude?

–Why do we blame Moscow for this progressive introversion? Would we be more social, living in the coastal Tuapse?

“This spring I was invited to a TV show to speak about urban loneliness… since I am an expert. And what did you achieve?”–Alex, jokingly.

You may say that I am exaggerating. Well, maybe. Let’s do an experiment: get the last message in which you wrote to someone that you miss him/her. Got it? Now try to remember when the last time was that you saw this person…