I have always hated loneliness. I'm sure we all do, but I held a particular contempt for the emotion. The kind of contempt one likes to revel in, to take out from time to time and spit at. And I dwelt in and on my loneliness, assuming I carried it as a burden I had been subjected to from birth. It was a part of me, a permanent punishment for my failure to be perfect. I was not good enough, cool enough, handsome enough... I was not enough.
I have always known my insecurities were incorrect and that God's love was enough. I've known that in my head and yet the loneliness remained.
Today, I was granted a view of loneliness from a new perspective. A perspective that did something wonderful. It made my loneliness ridiculous. Or rather, it made it ridiculous for me to call what I was feeling "loneliness." It was as though a humongous spider had been terrorizing me for years and today someone walked me around the back of the thing and showed me the nozzle where you could inflate it.
This afternoon I was feeling lonely. But that was ridiculous! I was surrounded by a work crew whose company I enjoy. I have plans to see a movie tomorrow night with a big group of people I like. I'd spent the day texting back and forth with one friend, while planning to call another for her birthday later on. There was no reason for me to feel lonely.
So, what could I call this sensation? What was the feeling I had been interpreting as loneliness for so long?
When boiled down to its simplest ingredients, without all of the guilt and nonsense I had piled on, I could see the sensation for what it was: a longing to spend quality time with quality friends. It was a longing, much like hunger. It was not a symptom, as I had so long identified it. It was a sign, not of illness, but of health! A gift from God, unrecognized in my life for decades.
It seemed odd at first to call a sense of lack a gift, but it is no stranger than calling hunger a gift. God could easily have made us perfectly content with purely liquid sustenance. Hummingbirds have no complaints on that issue. None I'm aware of anyway. Instead, He gave us a desire for cake. And steak. And carrots. And so on. And our lives are more vibrant, more complex, more fascinating as a result.
In the same way, we should not pray for our loneliness to disappear, but for it to be fulfilled. Instead of cursing lonely moments we should let them drive us to friendships. It can help us to find variety and depth in our friendships, if we remember to treat it, not as a sickness, but as a spur.
A great deal of our culture's time and money goes into avoiding the sensation of loneliness. TV, gaming, web surfing... They all keep us distracted, often with so much success that our friendships might move to the periphery of life. And this might seem such a great success that we can think of ourselves as having mastered loneliness. But really, all we have done is crippled ourselves and replaced a healthy longing with... well... best case scenario... videos of sloths and cats. If we embraced our hunger for company we might just find new compatriots in our projects and a broader view of the world.
Of course there can be desperate loneliness in this life, just as there can be starvation, but I think many of us are not given an alternative viewpoint on the matter. We watch movies and read books about the boy living friendless under the stairs, or the girl who has moved to a new city without any friends or connections and we identify with these characters when perhaps we shouldn't. We are giving in to a version of our feelings that only tells the most dramatic side of the story, a self-centered, self-pitying side. Most of us live in bedrooms, all of those reading this have internet access and very few of us are high school girls.
To those who are truly outcast and lack not only friendships but even the hope of friendships, I say; please email me.
Instead of being ashamed and crippled by our loneliness, allowing it to define us, we should be considering ways to feed our hunger for company in ways which more closely resemble a budgeted monthly shopping list; one that includes leafy green vegetables and lots of omega fatty acids (whatever those are).
I learned a long time ago to be purposeful about my friendships, especially since moving to New York. However, until now I had not realized that I must also change the narrative in my head about the impact of those friendships on my life. I need to stop believing "If only I had enough friends I wouldn't feel this way". As though having enough food in my fridge kept me from being hungry. I can now hold up the thought, "I feel the need for company. I should remember to call So-And-So after work".
