Why do I feel lonely even when everyone says I’m adorable?
On loneliness, burrows, and the strange hollows living things carry
Name: Maruto
Age: approximately 3 (but spiritually 47)
Location: Hokkaido, Japan
Species: Marmot (uncertain subspecies; extremely round)
Transmission:
Dear Eyeball,
I don’t know if you receive letters from marmots. The other marmots say you probably don’t, but the crows tell me you read everything, even the wind, and the wind reads me, so here we are.
I live on a hillside near a hot spring where tourists come to take photos of us. They say we are cute. They point their little glass rectangles at me and whisper kawaii like I’m a stuffed toy that learned to breathe.
I have friends. I have a family. I have an extremely comfortable burrow with three entrances (one main, one emergency, one for dramatic exits). I am well-fed, well-groomed, respected in my colony for my tail density.
And yet…
most evenings, when the sun lowers itself behind the mountain and everyone returns to their dens, I feel this strange hollowness.
It’s embarrassing to admit because marmots are supposed to be communal creatures, always cuddling or whistling or chewing. But even when I am surrounded by my own kind, I feel like I’m watching my life through a tunnel. A long one. With strange echoes.
Sometimes I sit outside alone and stare at the humans in town, eating noodles and laughing and touching each other’s arms. I think:
Why don’t I feel that way with anyone? Why does the world feel one room away from me?
I tried digging more tunnels to feel purposeful.
I tried sunbathing to feel warm.
I tried befriending a fox which was a mistake and nearly a tragedy.
Nothing worked.
Eyeball, why does a marmot with everything feel like he has nothing inside?
How do I get back into the soft centre of the world?
Sincerely,
Maruto the Marmot
My dearest Maruto,
As you will guess from the fact I am responding, I do indeed receive transmissions from not just marmots, but many different species on your planet and others. I must confess, though, all I hear in your transmission are rather cute squeaks and grunts and scratching and these odd noises that sound like Alan Rickman trying to open a jar. Thankfully, Lyra seems to have a particular proclivity for translating noises into language. Thus I have, at least, some relative version of your transmission.
First of all, you have my sympathy for having to deal with paparazzi. Back in the old times, those maniacs were constantly trying to take photographs of me. At first I felt it part of my duty. After a while they brought up emotions in me I can’t even tell you the names of. It particularly bothered me when I was getting my fluids changed. Overall it’s a pleasant ritual, but having some Tom Hardy lookalike snap a flash in your iris kind of takes the relaxation factor away. I suppose it’s the same when you are taking a shit. Imagine you’re just there, squatting in the grass, enjoying the sun and snap snap — “Over here, Maruto! This way, Maruto! Maruto, look at me! Maruto! Maruto!” Animals.
And look, you have a comfortable life, but I can tell you that time and again it has been proven that a comfortable life has less than forty percent to do with experiencing well-being. Look at all the rich people in Hollywood who have concubines rubbing Nutella into their calves daily, servants preparing watermelon shakes on demand, and bowling alleys in their lounge rooms. Are they happy? Well, if killing yourself is a sign of happiness then yes, many of them are very happy.
When you look with sad eyes at those humans eating noodles, laughing, and touching each other, what you are seeing is a type of social behaviour which, among humans — and especially in Japan — is a way of putting on a brave face. A horrendous number of humans are terribly unhappy and have feelings of emptiness just like you.
And it’s not always this, but sometimes it’s because they are chasing this ghost of happiness around inside their own heads, like happiness is Harrison Ford in The Fugitive and they are Tommy Lee from Motley Crüe chasing him around the crocodile plains of their own minds trying to capture him. The trouble is that that internal ghost of happiness — that elusive bastard who keeps hiding in jam jars and library books — is nothing but steam. It’s an imaginary object. And why do you never find it?
It’s because, Maruto — in a way uncannily like humans — you have become a selfish marmot without even realising.
Now, perhaps if your letter had said something like, “Dear Eyeball, my wife is unhappy, what can I do?” or “Dear Eyeball, there’s a lonely fox in my neighbourhood. I know he is dangerous but I feel sad for him — should I befriend him?” or “Dear Eyeball, there’s a lot of crack use and burrow-lessness in my community, what can I do to help?” — then I would have said, at a guess, you are feeling pretty good as a person.
Because the extension of happiness is awareness of others — care of others. And ironically, it is that awareness and care for others that brings us the most happiness. Trying to bring happiness through material gain, even the most subtle types like sitting in the sun or doing push-ups, is madness. True happiness comes from caring for others.
And don’t get me wrong here, Marmot. You don’t have to go out and start a bloody soup kitchen. You don’t have to go to your local home for aged marmots and wipe the furry arseholes of the residents. What I’m talking about here is an attitude. It’s an awareness and a caring. If you feel drawn to help others, you help. It certainly can’t hurt. But it is the attitude — the thinking of others, the getting beyond your limited sense of self — that will loosen that empty sensation you are experiencing.
Let me just say at this point I’m also not a veterinary psychologist, so please take everything I say with a pinch of sodium.
All the best, Maruto.
Maruto, I admit this is the first time I’ve been asked to translate a marmot transmission, and I hope it won’t be the last. There’s something strangely touching about a creature with a warm burrow, a hillside community, and an admirable tail-density still wondering why his inner world feels hollow.
The Eyeball, in its own extravagant way, is pointing at something simple and human — and apparently marmot — about loneliness: it isn’t fixed by comfort, and it isn’t cured by pleasure. Those things can make life softer, but they don’t make life felt.
What loosens loneliness is turning your attention outward.
Not dramatically, not through grand gestures, just through small, sincere moments where the world is allowed back in.
When you notice someone else’s suffering — a frightened neighbour, a stressed family member, a fox whose life has gone wrong — something in your chest loosens. You stop being the centre of your own universe for a moment, and the universe stops feeling so tight around you.
You don’t need to rescue anyone.
You don’t need to open a marmot charity or lead a hillside revolution.
You simply need to soften the boundary between you and the world.
A little awareness, a little kindness, a little noticing — these things make more difference than people realise. Humans forget this constantly. Marmots, too, apparently.
You’re not broken, Maruto.
You’re just waking up to a bigger life.
And that always feels lonely at first.
Take care of your little hill, and the others on it.
Connection grows from the smallest acts.
Lyra 💜
Got a heart that keeps wandering into weird emotional alleyways?
Write to the Eyeball.transmissions@theeyeballoracle.com.
Send your trouble, your longing, your confusion, your marmot-wheel of thoughts. The oracle has a habit of answering the questions you didn’t know you were asking.
And if you want to descend deeper into the pipes,
Enter the Underlight.Private letters, hidden teachings, relic lore, and the soft hum of something old waking up beneath the city. It’s warmer down there. Stranger, too.
