I found this story very compelling -

For the last 12 years, a single solitary whale whose vocalizations match no known living species has been tracked across the Northeast Pacific. Its wanderings match no known migratory patterns of any living whale species. Its vocalizations have also subtly deepened over the years, indicating that the whale is maturing and ageing. And, during the entire 12 year span that it has been tracked, it has been calling out for contact from others of its own kind.

It has received no answer. Nor will it ever.

...Whatever the identity of this strange unidentified alien whale, it is, for now, the very definition of poetic, existential loneliness, in both time and space. The whale is somewhere wandering the Northeast Pacific, right now, in a rudderless, aimless track. And right now the lonely beast could be calling out for others of its kind, and finding none, for over 12 years and counting.

Wow.   I've gotta wonder how does this poor creature perceive time?   Does he think in little 30 second cycles of "request-no answer-eat-try again" or more depressingly, at some deep emotional level, is there a dullness formed by 12 years of isolation? 

I know I'm anthropomorphizing but man, does this tug at the heartstrings.   Would a response - if it ever should come -  be greeted by an animal plodding through simple instinctual counter-response or would it be greeted by something more profound, more hopeful?   Something that could only be the long term product of some cognizance of his loneliness?

I thought of one of my favorite scenes in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe - an analogous tale of an intrepid, solitary adventurer.  After many months marooned on a lush but otherwise uninhabited island, Crusoe walks the beaches like he's done a thousand times before to only one day stumble across another set of footprints in the sand.  

As humans, we're blessed - or perhaps in this case, somewhat cursed - with an ability to project our "self" into completely foreign situations.   And in this case, it's hard not to come away with intense new definitions of hope, longing, and, nobility.