Loneliness is multifaceted, comes in various strengths, flavors and shades, pastel and primary.
Not all forms are negative, require therapy or can be “fixed” by having someone pop in.
Your (my) unique blend is best embraced.
Denying or rejecting it, over time, will cost you. Identified and embraced they (the many forms of loneliness) proffer opportunities for learning, opportunities for grace, for reflection. They provide a springboard for diving inward, for self-assessment. Do it well and you will be able to say with Psalmist David, who more than glimpsed within himself and was able to proclaim that he was “fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Rejected or denied, it will surface as thick-skinned crassness, emotional plaque, relational arthritis.
Unaddressed loneliness will transform into stones of self-righteousness even the hardened pharisees could not bring themselves to hurl once they self-assessed (dove inward) and saw themselves reflected in the eyes of the adulterous woman of John 8.
Loneliness, in some forms, comes in time to all of our lives, acknowledged or not. Some live with it for years, and years, and years, turns them (us) into cynics and comedians and adult class-clowns, and mean politicians, devoid of empathy. It will turn you (and me) into that person whom you sense you can never really get to know.
Not all forms of loneliness are painful. Some are stunningly beautiful.
Everything pivots on how we deal with our unique blend of loneliness or permit it to deal with us.
My beautiful home is empty of my sons. Each has moved into adulthood and has a significant relationship and a career and a full life of his own. Both men earn their way, love their partner – one being a wife. Each son is becoming more and more proficient and involved in his career. I rejoice that they are men of substance, people of character. I rejoice in their accomplishments. I celebrate their absence. I rejoice in their fullness of life (and even their expected struggles) they’re enjoying beyond this house, this address, this zip-code. The now-vacant domestic territories which were theirs in our shared home leave me room for the quiet joy of mission accomplished. Their absence, the alone-ness I feel, thrills me. I love it when they visit. I love it when they stay overnight, I love it when they call as they do usually several times a week. But, I’m really glad they don’t live here anymore and I know they are, too.
There is the loneliness of effective leadership.
Give yourself a few minutes and your mind will flood with the men and women whose leadership cost them everything, shaped the world as we know it. Their stands, opinions, decisions, also rewarded them with lives of isolation and pain as they made decisions popular and unpopular. They knew it came with the role and did it anyway. Great leadership (of nations, little-league soccer, city hall, the school board, your HOA) will give authentic leaders lasting tastes of life’s beauty and brutality, the inseparable rewards and “punishments” (sometimes even death) of sound and moral and courageous leadership.
There’s loneliness that comes from being in a crowd.
Most of us experience this and accommodate it when we do. It’s hard to sense we belong in some circles, because…… well….. we don’t. Nobody fits everywhere. (Beware if you do.) Where you don’t (fit) aloofness may travel in all directions, toward you and from you. These times are usually short-lived. Most of us accept and understand this kind loneliness can usually politely escape it if necessary.
Perhaps the hardest of all forms of loneliness lodge within the wake of significant loss.
Where there once was somebody, somebody whom we loved, somebody with whom we shared life, someone with whom we shared decades, who’s gone. Then, there is the loneliness that comes from indifference: the I-don’t-care-if-you-live-or-die loneliness, the severest cut of all.
You will find the best in others ……. if you look for the best in others. I refer to the best in others as their gold. It’s generosity, kindness, wholesomeness, creativity, and friendliness. These qualities live within all others (no exceptions). Such gold is available to be found. It comes with the human package.
There’s only one condition.
You have to be willing to acknowledge that there is gold within you and be willing to find it within yourself first before you will be able to see it in others. It may be hiding behind the shame and guilt and honed skills of deception you have had to download for protection and survival.
I am aware that “comes with the human package” is quite a claim.
Some will doubt. They will tell stories of those whom they found to be no-good to the core.
The gold within some is easy to find – not too much digging required.
For others it can be deeply buried in shame, humiliation, guilt, deception and in a belief that cruelty or violence or deception are, or were, necessary for survival.
“No-good to the core” has its reasons, its history.
But, the gold is still there.
It cannot be eliminated.
Given time to be heard, time for trust to build, time to tell his or her story, I know that who some regard as the worst of humanity are often bearers of the purest of gold.
The Mercury (this begins my 25th year of Monday to Friday Mercury columns)……..
It is a die-hard custom for columnist to “reflect” on the past year. Here are broad principles I have found to be true. I hope, readers in Southern Africa and elsewhere, that you will share yours with me:
Life is simultaneously beautiful and brutal. It is wiser to embrace both as fully as is humanly possible. Attempting to reject life’s inevitable brutality seems to delay deep appreciation and awareness of its beauty.
Generosity, kindness, openness to all others are more powerful than any politician or army.
My enemies unknowingly serve me, make me think, make me honor my life with greater effort and dedication. Thank you. I owe you. I long to repay you with grace, respect, and honor.
If I think my sons and their friends cannot teach me anything I soon discover I indeed have a lot to learn.
The most difficult people, the most demanding clients, the most trying customers, are those who offer me the most powerful opportunities to grow, learn, and exercise love and grace.
People do what they want to do. No finely designed intervention or battery of therapeutic skills can stop a person doing what he or she really wants to do.
The minute I blame anyone for anything, I regress. The minute I take responsibility for myself, I grow.
There is brokenness that leads to re-building, improved character, renewed strength, refreshed creativity.
I believe this capacity lives within us all.
I have seen this with my own eyes; men and women build beautiful lives after devastation, loss, betrayal and untold grief.
There’s brokenness that leads to bitterness, regret, desire for revenge and retribution.
It, too, lives in us all.
Stubbornness, coldness of heart, perhaps based in a desire for justification, provokes a tough journey.
I’ve seen men and women “go stubborn” and “go bitter” and be lead by the nose to destinations unbearable.
Brokeness, some, not all, is inevitable, comes packaged with life, time, age, growth and misplaced or misunderstood levels of trust.
Some comes as a result of pride and selfishness — or the rather simple but trustworthy principle of reaping what we’ve sown.
What will you do with yours?
Your brokenness?
What will I do with mine?
Our response — and it need not be immediate for wisdom is seldom knee-jerk — is a crucial choice.
It is not an easy choice, but choice is where it all begins – a little like Robert Frost’s “two roads diverged in a yellow wood.”
A choice to build and learn, a choice not to defend or attack, a choice to love in the face of rejection, a choice to give people what they ask for, a choice to engage, or not – perhaps the choice less travelled, will make the difference.
What’s in your tank? When I see the way some behave I have to ask the question.
Then I find the question coming right back at me when I react to others in ways that are hurtful, even harmful.
What are you running on? Is it regret, remorse, feeling of inferiority and rejection.
Is this why you lash out at others, most of whom you don’t even know?
None of these brewing emotions will get you (or me) very far even if regret and remorse and inferiority seem earned and appropriate. Live like this for any length of time and this toxic mix will return to you from all sides.
Perhaps life has filled your tank with anger, arrogance, grievances and blame.
Running on this mixed up mix may give you a feeling of empowerment but you will never find any semblance of happiness with all that living within you. Such attitudes and emotions will alienate you from others, even those whom you love.
This concoction will burn you and others if you live long enough without imploding or exploding.
May we (you and I) do whatever it takes to fill our tanks with humility and kindness.
Such attitudes and emotions will take us places worth going.
With humility and kindness filling our tanks we will build solid and trustworthy friendships.
I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
Your family – blood-, marriage, relatives-by-choice, adoption, and any other means people become family – is vastly more than a list of people on your group-chat or birthdays to try and remember or the ready-made crowd for weddings and funerals.
The hundreds of links (a family of 4 has 16 relationships) in your network – your family – and how you are linked (just right, over-connected, under-connected, loosely-affiliated, cut-off in anger, the “I’ll never talk to him/her-again” kind of connection) is of crucial importance.
How you are connected will either sustain and support and nourish you or drain and exhaust you. And, there is no escaping. Severe disconnections can wield a driving power even in a so-called non-relationship.
We are all “linked” and positioned in a variety of ways within the same extended family and so a family can nourish and support while, at the same time, it can rip to shreds and bleed someone dry.
I’d like to avoid this dramatic contrast but simply look around — listen to people’s family stories — you’ll see it is so.
We are each integral to the health (and un-health) of our family.
We are each a cell-within-the-whole.
The healthier we are, the more “just right” our connections, the more we will be nourishers and be nourished within the unique group of people we each call family.
The healthier I am will lead to a healthier “we” even if it results in hardship* along the way.
* attempts at greater health will be met with resistance from those around, especially those who’ve “benefited” from unhealthy habits and patterns.
No one feels healthy, and on top of the world, all the time.
Emotional ebbs and flows are normal.
Good days and bad days come with being human.
Give yourself a break.
If you are “down” for days, if you are unwilling to get out of bed, unwilling to engage in the regular and “normal” joys and tasks common to all people: like eating, bathing or showering, wearing clean clothing, getting ready for the day, the routines required of the general population, it may be time to seek help.
If you are overly tired and unmotivated, despite having had a good deal of sleep and find it tough to identify any joyfulness in any of your surroundings or activities or relationships, it may be time to seek help. If you sometimes feel plagued by dark thoughts, scary ideas you can’t seem to shed or shake – speak up to someone who can assist you to find help.
Emotional ebbs and flows are common but when the ebbs significantly outnumber the flows, it’s probably time to let someone know you are bordering on desperate or are already desperate.
While you think and feel you’re trapped in an emotional or relational cul-de-sac of desperation, you probably don’t have to remain there.
Reach out.
There are people willing, qualified, waiting to listen.
By “your story” I mean your unabridged, unedited story, the meanderings of your life, the whole truth, not only the shiny parts.
If we are at all similar and we probably are, you may have noticed our propensity to play the well-worn tracks, the golden-oldies, we speak of those areas of our lives and they come out well-rehearsed, cute lines, anecdotes that flow with ease, often with intent to impress. With these areas of our lives we are seasoned raconteurs.
What will it take for you and I to unblock the blocked, dislodge darker areas, give the hidden areas of our lives a little light?
When we give these parts a little airtime, allow ourselves and others to know us at deeper, unrehearsed levels, it usually – if we are careful about whom we choose as an audience – gives the opportunity to be known a little deeper and to discover something new about ourselves.
“Out of the mouths of babes,” usually refers to something cute and endearing from children.
Out of the mouths of adults, the unrehearsed and previously unsaid, can be painful to admit and hear, but it may bring greater redemption and healing for both speaker and the carefully selected listeners.
“If the cap fits……. wear it,” as my dear dad would say.
Am I writing to you? I hope not.
Dear Business Owner
Your life impacts the lives of many others. Your decisions create waves for others to sink or swim. Consider it an act of compassion to think about the impact your decisions have on many others. Live to empower and encourage rather than plunder and accumulate.
Your financial status has power and how you use or misuse it reveals everything about your character. You appear unaware that some people are intimidated by wealth and feel beholden to you, while also welcoming their adultion.
Walk gently.
Hold onto the knowledge that there are people wealthier than you who have managed to be wealthy, kind, and generous.
It is possible.
Try not to forget there are people who are much poorer than you who are vastly happier and more content than you appear to be. Your concerns, worries, anxieties, successes, conquests, apparently give you the idea that you are the center of the universe.
You are not.
A moment of compassion from you expressed toward others – beginning with your vast payroll – many of whom are struggling, will make all the difference both to you and to many others.
At present your life is heartily affirming the age-old idea that money cannot buy happiness.
difficultrelationships.com 