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.