Everyone feels lonely sometimes.
Whether you’re a brand-new freshman on a large college campus, newly single, or have just moved to a different area for a job, chances are you’ve felt lonely at one time or another.
Some loneliness—as in the above scenarios—is situational. Sometimes the isolation is temporary. You get to know your new co-workers, make connections on campus, or enter the world of dating again. Soon the loneliness dissipates.
But there’s another kind of loneliness that many of us feel from time to time. Call it existential loneliness: the realization that each of us is essentially on our own in this world. As a wise person I know says: “We enter the world alone, and we leave it alone.” Many of life’s big changes we face alone and have to handle relying on our own resources. We can only depend on ourselves to make major decisions. Perhaps we get help from friends and family but in the end the choices are ours alone to make.
You can’t help but feel this existential loneliness every once in a while. Maybe it’s good to be reminded that this is part of the human experience. If we look around us, we realize anyone, at any time, may be facing a moment of solo decision-making or facing news that affects only them. Acknowledging that can gives us greater sympathy and tolerance for others. In a sense we are all alone together.
So loneliness—both situational and existential—is a very normal experience. Yet some of us cope with chronic isolation. The elderly, immigrants, people living with mental or physical illness—all these groups deal with more than their share of loneliness. Perhaps their contact with others is limited, or perhaps a lack of self-esteem creates a feeling of being alone even when they are with others. I know someone with epilepsy who was ostracized by her peers and resorted to making up games she could play on her own. Another friend was one of the most ostensibly successful students at her high school, but because her parents were going through an ugly divorce she thought no one understood her situation. This popular girl suffered great loneliness, though none of her peers knew it.
We shouldn’t assume loneliness of people who live alone or are single by choice. And we all need time to ourselves, to be sure. But there are individuals who for whatever reason are alone more than they want to be. Maybe they can help themselves by joining a group of people with similar interests, becoming part of a church congregation, or volunteering with a local organization. Sometime little changes can garner big results.
Can we help people who feel alone? I think we can. We can pick up on cues that a friend is feeling isolated after a loss and reach out to them. We can strike up a chat with a widowed neighbor, or visit a housebound elder. Again, little efforts can make a big difference.
Years ago I read a novel with loneliness as a major theme. The story tells of a young 19th century soldier whose career moves him all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire and leaves him very isolated. He finally makes a friend—a fellow chess player— but after a few years the man dies of an illness. The last scene of the book shows the protagonist sitting down to play chess alone, imagining his late friend across the chess board from him.
I read the final scene of this book in a library, and couldn’t help but weep aloud as I read. As a matter of fact several people I know had the same reaction to this last scene, shedding tears in public at the thought of such heartbreaking loneliness.
Maybe we are programmed to feel another’s pain this keenly. Maybe Nature, who made us social creatures, wants us to grieve for others’ loneliness so that we’ll reach out to them. At any rate, humans are not meant to always be alone. We need each other. Loneliness is a very human dilemma, with a very human solution—love.
