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What about loneliness?

Those of us who live with difficulty usually live with loneliness. The issue of loneliness is a grinding and hurtful experience. All of us know about loneliness to some extent. Loneliness and the pain loneliness brings may be the most common pain humans experience. We all think we are the only ones who are lonely and most other people think they are the only ones who are lonely. When the facts are laid out, we are just as lonely as they are and they are just a lonely as we are. Loneliness affects us all.

Recently I heard a man talk about meeting Elvis Presley. If there was anyone in the world who you would think would not be lonely it would be Elvis. The man relayed in his recounting of meeting Elvis how Elvis was in a hotel room, alone, with tin foil over the windows, no light was on, and in a fit of anger, Elvis had shot a bullet into his television set. A little funny, perhaps, but also tragically sad. Being adored by millions is no answer to the cancer of our souls. If we dig into Elvis’ life, we find a man who was in excruciating pain. Perhaps this excruciating loneliness was what drove Elvis to end his life too soon.

Loneliness is indeed a cancer of the soul. Loneliness eats away at our soul and tears at our heart. There are hard answers to dealing with loneliness but no easy answers. There are hard-to-do solutions to loneliness but no easy solutions. All of us have felt loneliness. Many of us live with constant loneliness. Sharing your living space is not always the answer because sharing living space can increase your pain if the persons we are with cut us off, finds fault, or is not compatible with us. There is no person who has ever walked the earth who has not felt this aloneness. Jesus, the night before He went to the Cross, asked his followers, "Could you have not stayed with me one hour?" On the Cross, Jesus was abandoned. Only two women and one boy (John) were with Him as He died. What can we do with loneliness? What can we do about it? How do monks who cut themselves off voluntarily stand the loneliness?

One thing we must realize is how our being alone is not God’s will for us. He came into the world to show us He loves us and cares about us. After He ascended to heaven after he arose, He sent back a part of Himself (the Holy Spirit) to be with us and comfort us when we hit these dark moments. We are each in some kind of circumstance and we blame the circumstance for our being alone or lonely. We must try not to do this. When we point fingers, make excuses, whine, or complain (even when we have a lot to complain about) we point our thinking, our heart, and our soul in the wrong direction. Although we do not mean to do so, we point our life in a backward direction when we whine, complain, and make excuses. When we are always forward thinking, that is, thinking about tomorrow rather than the last few seconds or even our present pain, we leave the pain in the past. One way we can deal with our loneliness is by finding a consuming passion of service to others. Another way we can deal with our loneliness is to find others like ourselves. We need to find people who understand our particular situation and where we are in our life. If we need to find others who face the same situations we do, we might try and form a local group within our own locality. For those of us who have disabilities or burdens we need to try and meet with others with whom we have something in common if meeting others is what we need.

There is, however, one vital ingredient in all this talk. This ingredient is giving to God. Giving to God is hard to do for us. When we are lacking and hurting how can we give to God? How can we give when we are in poverty ourselves? One way we can do this is to unselfishly love others on God’s behalf. Many people believe in God but they don’t believe He has any contact with them. God may want us to "take advantage" of our burdens and difficulties by showing others how God in Christ is alive and is a real person. I hope one of the outcomes of this essay is people in pain will find pain can be "used." I hope even when you hurt, you can give the darkness a mortal blow by being a light to others around you.