We’re not lonely because we are separate. We feel lonely because we are relational. That is where Oneliness begins.
I’m Monika Jiang, a writer and community builder. My work asks what becomes possible when we stop treating loneliness as a problem to solve—and start remembering and reimagining a different way of being.
The IdeaLoneliness is not a crisis. And it is.
It is a natural response to the world we have constructed — the systems, structures, and stories that reward self-sufficiency, pathologize need, and outsource intimacy to platforms and products. The crisis is not loneliness itself but the fear of it, and the exhausting lengths we go to in order to avoid it.
Oneliness is the philosophical lens I've been developing in response. A way of being. The recognition that we are always alone and always in relationship, simultaneously with ourselves, with others, with the world, and with something greater than all of it.
Living from this paradox can change everything.
Essays & Podcast
Essays and conversations tracing Oneliness through the structures of contemporary life — artificial intimacy and AI companionship, the overburdening of romantic love, what productivity culture does to our capacity for care, how cities are built for convenience rather than encounter, what faith and ritual carry that secular modernity has lost.
Speaking
Keynotes on loneliness as a structural condition — for organizations, cultural institutions, and festivals navigating the future of work, technology, and human relationships.
L'Oréal Professional · Pullman Hotels · Phoenix Group · P150 · Nebenan Stiftung · TEDxPotsdam · The Conference · House of Beautiful Business · Unfinished Festival · Future Days · The Merode
Shared Table Dinners
Shared Table Dinners are local rituals around the questions of Oneliness — how do we want to live in relationship with ourselves, with others, with friendship, love, nature, technology, the cultures and structures that shape us? A civic act in the most intimate form of community as practice.
Initiated in Berlin. Available for organizational commissions, leadership retreats, and festival programming.
Daily Connect
A daily 15-minute virtual practice informed by social neuroscience research, where two people meet, reflect on a moment of difficulty and gratitude from their day, and listen deeply without interruption or advice. In other words: an embodied practice of Oneliness.
Get in touch with me!
With a request, a message, or a wish—I’d be happy to hear from you.