Nobody warns you about this part.
You start seeing things differently, you get genuinely excited about it — and then you look around and realise almost nobody near you can follow where you’ve gone. It’s isolating in a way that’s hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t been there.
It’s also completely normal, and far more common than the silence around it suggests.
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People like us have existed for as long as there have been people. There have always been souls who intuitively understand what’s going on here. And for those souls, life can be — well. At times, an absolute ride through hell.
If you believe in uncommon wisdom and alternative ways of living, and you don’t conform easily, you’ll meet resistance from every direction — for no reason other than not being like everyone else.
When the family is religious
This is where it gets hardest, and I’ve lived it.
Organised religion has an appalling record on people who step outside the lines — the shaming, the exclusion, the burning, the destruction of knowledge that didn’t suit whoever held the keys. That’s history, and in parts of the world it isn’t even history yet.
I’m not talking about believers. I’ve known people whose faith is the most generous thing about them. I’m talking about institutions, and about what gets done to people in the name of belonging.
I have friends whose families threw them out for not conforming. Coldly, permanently. If you’re in that position, the loneliness isn’t philosophical — it’s the actual loss of the people who were supposed to be yours.
My advice: don’t fight it head-on. You will not argue anyone out of a belief that holds their whole world together, and the attempt costs you far more than it costs them. Let them keep what works for them, and detach emotionally.
If it becomes genuinely damaging, you’re allowed to step back and protect yourself. That doesn’t have to mean cutting anyone off forever — distance and finality aren’t the same decision, and you don’t have to make the bigger one while you’re hurt.
What you shouldn’t do is hand over your own strength and truth to keep the peace. That has a long history of going badly.
It isn’t always about the big things
Sometimes you feel like the outsider over something as small as dinner.
A few years ago, eating clean — or being vegan — was still treated as exotic here in Norway, land of comfort and unchanging habits. People found it odd, and some actively took offence if you didn’t eat whatever was put in front of you.
I’ve been that person at the table more than once. I also talk about it, which doesn’t help. In my view what you eat is basic maintenance, not a lifestyle position — but saying so at dinner reliably annoys people, and I’ve made my peace with the fact that everyone gets to decide for themselves.
It’s a small thing. But small things are where the separateness actually shows up day to day.
You find the old knowledge exciting. Nobody else does
Maybe you’re like me and you connect with ancient knowledge in a way that lights you up. The internet handed us a library we were never meant to have, and things start connecting.
So you’re fired up and you want to talk about it. And the people closest to you are not remotely ready to hear it. You’re broadcasting on a frequency they’re not tuned to, and no amount of enthusiasm changes that.
A few hundred years ago you’d have been burned for it. Now people just change the subject.
When I talk about life on other planets and point at the documentation that exists, most people laugh or look at me sideways. I say it anyway. Whether they go home unsettled or curious isn’t my business — speaking plainly is.
Give it time. Enjoy your own view of things. And start finding the people who want to know how being human here actually works — they exist, and there are more of them every year.
You stop accepting the unspoken rules
This has been my own hardest part.
Educate yourself for long enough and you start seeing the patterns — the herd behaviour, the strange laws, the rules nobody can justify when asked. And then you can’t stop seeing them.
The most sensitive people get genuinely angry about it, and eventually exhausted by it. Some withdraw completely and start sketching a cabin in the woods.
That’s the cruel part of this. The people beginning to understand the most are the ones treated as outsiders for it. Not being accepted is a specific kind of lonely, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone.
Solitude and isolation are not the same thing
I often choose my own company over most of the people I know. Not out of superiority — I just can’t do another evening of small talk and other people’s drama, and the way I live doesn’t overlap much with the people around me.
That’s solitude, and I recommend it. It’s restorative and it’s chosen.
But it’s worth being honest with yourself about which one you’re in. Solitude fills you up. Isolation empties you out, and it’s very good at telling you it’s solitude.
If the loneliness has stopped feeling like a phase and started feeling like the weather — if you’ve been low for months, or you’ve stopped reaching for anyone at all — that’s not a spiritual stage to push through. Talk to someone. A friend who gets it, or someone whose job it is. Waking up is hard enough without doing it while depleted, and there’s no prize for going through it alone.
You’re not alone. Just not adjacent
There are a lot of us. We’re simply not in the room with you right now.
It can be a lonely stretch, because this still isn’t common. But don’t slide back into a false comfort zone to make it stop — that trade never holds, and you’ll have given something away to get it.
Keep going. Eat in a way that keeps your mind sharp. Keep learning whatever actually nourishes you. Get strong enough that you can be useful to the people who’ll come looking later, because they will.
Related: 11 reasons you’re not fitting in with society, and why am I changing.
One last thing. Wrap yourself in a blanket tonight and watch Powder (1995). You’ll understand why.
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