All the Lonely People

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"It is not good for the man to be alone." - Genesis 2:18

We like to think of the holidays as happy times when we gather to celebrate friends and family. Yet, for too many, the holidays are salt in the gaping wounds of loss and loneliness. This is borne out in a brief survey of today's headlines: "America's Loneliness Epidemic", "UK Appoints a Minister for Loneliness", "Public Health Relevance of Social Isolation and Loneliness". We have a problem. What we are intuiting and what our lived experience tells us is being acknowledged by governments, healthcare providers, and business leaders. We are lonely. And it's costing us.

There are so many factors that have contributed to this epidemic: our mobility (our lack of roots in a community), drastically shortened career life cycles, relationships based on utility or proximity (usually career) that end when we change jobs or move. Transitioning through life stages: student, career, single, married, parent, empty-nester, widowed/divorced, retired, and care-giver. All these stages are the realities of modern life. Transitioning between these stages disconnects us from others at the same stage. Establishing human connection at each successive transition is more difficult than the one preceding it.

In addition to transience, we have to recognize that modernity is mechanistic, i.e process oriented. Modernity rejects the spiritual, the metaphysical, the deus ex machina, i.e. it rejects any notion of non-material causality. Ironically though, modernity does have a deity: utility.

"Utility is the god of modernity"

― Esther Lightcap Meek  

Utility is the unseen medium through which we move. Every material thing, every occasion, every relationship is measured against it. Utility is the progenitor of work. We work to sustain ourselves and to give our lives a purpose. And certainly, our employer pays us for a purpose. But both employee and employer relate to one another out of utility. Once that utility ceases, so does our value to an employer. At that point, our employment relationship ends. In the 21st century world of work, our workflow can be so automated that we rarely interact with other humans. We report to a digital supervisor as automated systems call us to a shift or track our movements.

This bent toward utility extends beyond employment. It determines how much we will invest into maintaining friendships and family ties over over extended distances and through challenging circumstances. Marriage and significant-other relationships are no guarantee against loneliness, though our culture and technology pushes us to "pair up". Too often, we just end up being alone in pairs.

Whether we live by ourselves or with a significant-other, we will inevitably lose people in our lives. That being the case, we should always be open to establishing new connections. But, alas, we don't. There are many factors that may inhibit our ability to connect, but I will focus on this one:

"A national culture that promotes polite restraint, and which actively fends off and forestalls the forming of relationships between strangers, is one that might as well be inviting loneliness on its population." - Chris Bourn 

The author of this quote is speaking specifically about English culture, but I would suspect nearly all English-speaking countries have inherited this reserve as a cultural attribute. Because "utility is the god of modernity", we call on this god to justify (excuse) our breaking this boundary of reserve to establish a connection but only because something is needed or something must be done. We have forgotten how to connect with people for no other reason than they are people!

Another obvious but neglected connection is with our neighbors. Although I know my neighbors fairly well, I still have to resist the temptation to go buy a tool or contract a service when I could simply ask my neighbor to help me. "Sorry to bother you" is not simply a cliché or a movie title, but is too often our default to connecting with others. We need to view our need for help as an opportunity, not a liability.

Befriend your neighbors. When we truly know them, we are more willing to work for the common good. - Fr Richard Rohr

When we are friends with our neighbors and there is some degree of mutual reliance, it breaks the cycle of isolation. When my neighbor needs some staple item, she will knock on our door. It's happened a few times. One day, she stopped me to apologize for always asking for something. I replied, "No worries, what are neighbors for?" We have a long way to go to change our mindset.

To deal with the consequences of loneliness, many seek out the services of therapists. In this day and age, therapists provide an invaluable service to help us deal with loneliness. However, not everyone can afford therapy. Not to criticize therapy, but have we not commodified what used to be simple friendship? Have we not redefined a basic human need into into a pathology requiring a clinical solution? Yet:

"Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical."
- Dr Shawn Ginwright

What Dr Ginwright is saying is that healing and well-being take place in the presence of others. But it's not enough to be in the presence of others. We have all experienced that feeling of being alone in a crowd. We must be seen and recognized by other people and we must recognize them. We must be open to it. It must be mutual. For that to happen, a mutually safe space must exist. Someone has to take the initiative by asking the other person about themselves. If there is one universal truth, it's that everyone loves to talk about themselves.  That opens up a space. That space has a name: hospitality. To be hospitable is to have a spirit that welcomes others into one's presence. A hospitable spirit is also open to the invitation of others.

In a hospitable space, we may be able to go deeper in sharing and connecting to that which makes us most deeply human:

"I have found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. " - Carl Rogers

If we are able to connect at that deepest level, it would heal our deepest wound, loneliness, the scab of which is alienation. Alienation, that sense of disconnection and distrust of others, is the dry tinder that fuels the wildfires of divisive politics. Alienation is the root of what ails us in the West. It makes us good consumers, compliant laborers, fearful citizens, and an apathetic electorate.

In the end, we must choose to reach out. That requires courage, sparked by the hope of connection, the hope that we are not alone, and faith in a better future. Our willingness to enter the world  of others, to connect with people, is an echo of the Nativity, where God entered our world to connect with us.