Living young, hip—and lonely—in Vancouver

Fresh out of fashion-design school, Claire Olsen moved to Vancouver from Lethbridge to kick start her career seven years ago. At just 21, Olsen seemed to have it all: an apartment in the hippest city in Canada, a cool job, and all the freedom in the world. Privately, though, with only two friends here, she found the loneliness of the first couple of years crushing.

"For me, loneliness led to depression," the now-28-year-old told the Georgia Straight by telephone.

Although she no longer feels isolated thanks to a hard-earned collection of 15 loyal friends, Olsen can plainly see loneliness painted on the faces of the hipsters in her midst.

"When I watch people in Vancouver, they're all in their own little scene," she said. "They're trapped in a scene they think is cool, or hip. It's about acceptance. If you're in a scene, like the music scene or the arts scene, you're automatically accepted, whether you're a 'poseur' or you're really into it."

Olsen pointed out that in such a beautiful city, you'd expect residents to be friendly. She, and countless others, find the opposite. Much has been made about how hard it is to meet people in this city.

"Why are Vancouverites so damned unfriendly? It seems everyone has an attitude," reads a posting on the Discover Vancouver forum (www.discovervancouver.com/). "If you're not into nightlife much or outdoor recreational type activities, then it [Vancouver] can end up feeling a bit cold and empty. It's not the easiest place to make friends," quipped somebody posting on www.rateitall.com/.

Art imitates the loneliness of life in Eleanor Rigby, one of Douglas Coupland's latest novels. The book traces a story of a very, very lonely 36-year-old Vancouverite and was named after the Beatles song which goes, "All the lonely people/ Where do they all come from?"

Loneliness is disastrous for mental health, but it's almost inevitable, claims a UBC earth-sciences professor who spends his time thinking about biological and human systems.

"We evolved accustomed to being embedded in a larger system," Dr. Kurt Grimm told the Straight. He said that modern people are no longer embedded in a village or in nature. Grimm argues that separation from other humans and the earth has an alienating effect. Both the collapse of environmental and social systems can be tied to that isolation, he said.

In other words, things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold-as W.B. Yeats pointed out in 1920. Only, as Grimm suggests, it's getting worse.

"Modern life is lonely and disconnected," he said. "We have cellphones and computers and messages coming in, we go through life distracted. We're striving for more stuff, more extreme experiences. Extreme chewing gum, extreme sports-we're running from our emptiness.

"The loneliest demographic is youth [high school and university students]. They've bought into advertising. The images thrown at them are 'be beautiful, be bulletproof, aloof, extreme, and special'-so individuated. In this city, the backdrop is advertising. I can see how lonely most people are. Me too."

But loneliness isn't new, and it's not just the domain of the young, according to a doctor in psychology who has led seminars in loneliness since the 1970s. Stephen Linn told the Straight that "we lonely ourselves" by concealing our true selves in favour of showing the world how cool we are.

"Being hip is a pretence. It's about being included, or trying to be included. Life is an incredible gift, but we live in danger of losing it because we do these things." Still, that's nothing new, and nothing unique to Vancouver, Linn believes. "People are lonely everywhere. In my experience, it's been there since day one. In 1846, [Henry David] Thoreau said, 'All men live lives of quiet desperation.' I don't think it's worse now."

But according to Lavalife, Canada's biggest Internet-and-phone dating service, Vancouverites are reaching out electronically more than anyone else in the country. "Vancouver is one of our largest markets," Lavalife brand manager Lori Miller told the Straight, adding that she can't disclose what percentage of the company's eight million members live here. "Toronto is number one [by number of members], but Vancouver is very close behind."

Given that metro Toronto has over double the population of metro Vancouver, that's a pretty profound statement. But what does it mean?

Grimm cynically theorizes that reaching out on-line doesn't amount to much.

"I call it pseudo-community," he said. "We can talk, but we can't fill each other's cups on the Internet. But we can distract ourselves from our loneliness there."

The times, they are a changin', though. Due to an increasingly fractured environment, Grimm predicts that we're in the midst of a "great transition" both for the planet and our social systems.

"From sickness to health-it's all a part of sustainability. From loneliness to living a healthy, actualized life. It's an organic process, and there's good things happening....There's good things happening in the churches, where people are really wanting a real experience of the sacred. It's hip to be spiritual-yoga, meditating. Some are posing, but a lot are not. We're all feeling around in the dark trying to find it."

Olsen considers herself too "real" to be truly hip. She maintains that things haven't changed yet; out of all the places she has lived in Alberta and B.C., Vancouver still stands alone as the most isolating city in the West.

"A lot of people who aren't from here find it excruciatingly hard to meet people," she said. "Those with groups don't want to add to them. They don't want to share. It's almost as if they're territorial, like 'It took me a long time to build up this circle, and you can't join.' It's very high-school."

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