Loneliness

Loneliness is the damnedest thing.  We can sit alone in the middle of nowhere and be just fine, then be lonely in a room crowded with people.  And yet, loneliness is often identified with being alone, or worse, with solitude.  If you don’t believe me, Google Why do we avoid being alone? and you’ll see article after article about loneliness and how to avoid it.  And if you spend any time around self-help groups, you’ll likely be advised not to isolate when you feel down … but it’s my experience that sometimes a little time alone (usually to write) is just what I need.  So, what’s the difference?  Well, intent.  In isolating we seek to get away from others while in solitude we seek to be alone.  That can be a fine hair to split.   Our society abhors being alone, making it synonymous with loneliness and yet it’s essential to an inner life that makes our lives here fulfilling as well as busy.  Think about it … is He’s such a loner a complement?  When you see an old man (me, maybe) alone on a park bench, do you think, He’s a sage or He’s lonely?  We have become so afraid of loneliness that we keep ourselves surrounded by people and activity, even if it is via our electronic devices.

This week, I’ve been isolating, even though unless you know me well, you wouldn’t notice.  I’ve done most of the people activities I do every week.  But I kept part of me locked inside and part of everyone else locked out.  And I was lonely, even though at my center, I knew I wanted … needed, in fact … solitude.   Thinking about that, I wrote this unconventional definition of loneliness: Loneliness is thinking you want to be with someone, whether you really do or not.  There is something that runs deep in me, a life-axiom that says You should always want to be with those you love.  That nearly subconscious belief causes me to imagine some slight by others as the reason I want to be alone and that shift in attitude makes me lonely.

The truth is, it is impossible to avoid loneliness in this life.  As Mark Nepo says in The Book of Awakening, Indeed, we all share this mysterious fact – that no one else can go into our depth completely.  We must travel there alone.  It is where we commune with God.  I think that for most of us, going beyond what Nepo calls the glass doors of our experience** to that quiet place requires some transitional loneliness.  It is the simple but sometimes difficult shift in attitude from avoiding others to wanting to be alone that transforms isolation into solitude.  It’s worth the effort.

**On the August 2 page, The Mermaid, Nepo speaks of walking his partner, Anne, to surgery for cancer but not being able to go beyond the glass doors of the operating room.  He uses it as a metaphor for those places we can’t even take those we love most.

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Tags: feeling older, gratitude, loneliness, mindfulness, perspectives, postaday, psychology, sadness

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