“SOMETIMES the loneliness melts into tears. Sometimes it's like a summer storm. It comes suddenly and overtakes one.” These words sound like lines penned by one of the Romantic poets, but they're not. They are part of a statement issued last week by the state police department in Rome after one of their patrol cars responded to a call from neighbours in a block of flats in the centre of the city. Neighbours had reported loud howling and crying coming from a flat occupied by an elderly couple, Jole (84) and her husband Michele (94).

Jole and Michele had been watching the television news and become overwhelmed by the depressing state of the world. Already profoundly lonely as nobody had visited them for months, they fell into a vortex of acute despair. When the police arrived at their flat, they learned that Jole had begun to cry uncontrollably while watching the news. Her husband, then became very upset and was unable to comfort her. Their combined despair and isolation created a tsunami of grief which erupted into their howling alarm bell.

Realising that no crime had been committed, the four officers who attended the call quickly recognised the couple's heartbreaking predicament and offered them something outwith their job descriptions: a large helping of humanity, cooked up by the officers themselves in a simple meal of spaghetti with butter and cheese. Plain, ordinary fare. Less ordinary is the fact that the police officers acted above and beyond their normal line of duty. They weren't obliged to hang around and offer something more than a (non)-incident report. They could have mumbled a few kind words and moved on to the next emergency call. Reassuringly, they were so affected by the old couple's display of human vulnerability and distress, they allowed their empathy to overrule their job spec and do the right thing by providing some TLC. All in all, their intervention probably took no longer than the time it takes to boil a pan of spaghetti. They were able to think (and cook) on their feet by nurturing the company-starved couple with kindness and concern.

Less ordinary still, is the fact that this story went viral across the world as a unique and newsworthy event. We have to wonder if small acts of natural, human kindness are now becoming rarefied and, if so, how does this happen in a world where we are, supposedly, constantly "connected"? The number of people who report feeling lonely has quadrupled over the last 10 years and loneliness is predicted to be the next great epidemic. While intermittent loneliness and solitude can be valuable in helping us to reflect on our priorities and re-evaluate our relationships with others, chronic loneliness shortens our lifespan by making us more susceptible to ill-health and disease. This genre of loneliness is a serious and pernicious condition that is ever harder to cure in a society that elevates the cult of privacy and individualism to a level that puts our human need to reach out, completely out of reach. The more loneliness endures, the less equipped and inclined we are to act to change it. Of all species of life, humans are the most adaptive and, true to form, people are maladapting to accepting loneliness. This maladaptation encourages suspiciousness, anger, depression and anxiety that, in turn, make us less open to giving and receiving the human contact we need.

In effect, loneliness creates a cycle of despair. No wonder Jole and Michele howled in protest at their rotten predicament. Like the healthy infant who cries out to alert the parent when something is wrong, Jole and Michele still had enough humanity (and lung power) in them to tell the world that they'd had enough, that they couldn't stand it any longer and that they needed someone to hear them, to help them. In this respect, their cries, although profoundly sad, were also life-affirming. “We are here. We matter. We are old, yes, but we still need the comfort of strangers.”

There are those who say that it is not the role of the police to intervene in scenarios such as this. It seems to me that it is the duty of all of us as human beings to intervene when we see someone struggling with isolation and loneliness. It can be something as simple as saying hello, smiling when you pass your neighbour on the stairs and asking them how they are, or helping to carry shopping for an elderly neighbour. Essentially, it's about caring for others, not just those who are in your inner circle or those who share the same genetic code. As humans, we are all part of the same tribe.