Loneliness Stinks (May 7, 2006)

Some years ago I was asked to fill out a survey that was part of somebody's research project on loneliness. I had no idea how to answer most of the questions, because they seemed to assume that loneliness was a thing we all experienced occasionally. (E.g. "When I feel lonely, I am more likely to (A) eat food, (B) phone a friend.") How do you answer that when you have never been lonely?

A friend of mine once said, "Being alone does not mean you are lonely" - and that pretty much said it for me. I never regarded solitude as a burden, and often sought it deliberately.

But I am older now, and things change, and once-welcomed solitary interludes have become dreaded spells of inactive longing. Only now do I understand from the inside something C. S. Lewis wrote about in A Grief Observed. After his wife died he said that he wanted people to be around him but not especially paying attention to him. "Just let me be here while you go about your business." Lewis had been a bachelor until well into his 50s, and had always treasured his solitude and made magnificent use of it, until it was thrust unbidden upon him. Then it was hard, and he needed the comfort of company.

Today as I write this I have a sense of settled joy because both my sons are home and sleeping in their beds. They are not doing anything at all, except maybe snoring, but it is good just that they are there. Peter should be in school; when I got him up this morning he said he didn't feel well and wanted to stay home. He's not sick. Normally I'd kick him out the door and tell him to get his lazy butt to school - but this time I relented and called in for him. He's exhausted today because he stayed up all night talking to his older brother who I picked up from college yesterday for spring break. Fair enough. Just for today, stay. Sleep it off and we'll do something together this afternoon.

On the ride home from college Ben mentioned that he sometimes found it hard to have meaningful conversations with people who had never experienced trouble. (And he is only 18 - little does he know how much more trouble awaits him!) I know what he means. It is so hard, probably impossible, for a sheltered person to gain the kind of depth that makes him a worthy partner for discussion. In reflecting on this I realized that, in years past, if someone had told me about his or her loneliness I suppose I could have slammed the discussion shut with "I actually like to be alone." While true, that would have been neither empathetic nor helpful.

But I can do better than that now, I think. Having felt for the first time the scars of loneliness I cannot jest at their wounds. It is good to be around people. And it is not good - as God said after making Adam, and as I can affirm from experience - it is not good to be alone.