The feeling of being lonely may frequently accompany the experience of being alone, but the two should never be regarded as being one and the same thing; they may be closely connected or even inseparably entwined with each other, but this should be recognized as being the particular circumstance of individual persons, not taken as being the norm. However rarely it may occur, and however fleeting it may be, a feeling of loneliness is part of most people’s life experience, but here again we have something that is too easily mistaken for something that it is not. Our occasional feeling of being lonely must never be equated with the chronic loneliness experienced by many others. It can never give us an awareness of the loneliness lived by people we never see – those who hide away from us – or of those we do see but who hide their loneliness from us; it can never give us the ability to open our eyes to see those whose paths we cross every day: the seemingly gregarious person at work, or the lost, depressed, or dispossessed persons we pass in our well frequented streets.
For many of us our short-lived feelings of loneliness are merely a form of boredom: a gap in the constant movement and buzz of our lives for which we are not prepared, primarily due to our failure to create such gaps for ourselves. We are out of practice; we do not do it any more; we do not recognize any reason for doing it; it is no longer part of our lives and it has simply faded away. When we suddenly find ourselves in such a gap, we hurriedly search for something to fill it, and whatever activity or venue may be involved is only the means to the one important end: some form of contact and communication with other people.
Thinking and writing the above has raised a mildly discomforting feeling within me: a feeling which reminds me again that we are truly astonishing creations, with a potential to become sources of comfort, compassion and consolation for others – beacons of light in the dimly lit corners of this world.
I am in no position to disagree with René Voillaume’s assertion (previous post) that human friendship ‘is probably indispensable for human perfection’, but I do not regard it as being essential for happiness. Having good friends undoubtedly contributes greatly to one’s feelings of being appreciated, valued, cared for and needed; it helps to keep us cheerful and stimulated, and engenders a feeling of being happy. But this feeling conjures up one of life’s many illusions. It is so easy to believe that feeling happy equates to real happiness, but happiness is not merely a feeling, it is a state of mind: a way of being.
The aim of our spiritual life is often thought of as being perfection. Perfection is what we strive for, and, though we are well on our way when first becoming aware of the fact, it is what we hope to achieve when we first set out on our journey. But what leads us toward that goal is nestled between the two: between our stepping out in faith and our approaching perfection. The aim of our spiritual life is friendship with God. We move toward perfection through our relationship with Him. We gradually become more perfect through being close to Him. This closeness, through the awakened consciousness of both His love for us and our growing love for Him, is experienced as a meaningful friendship with Jesus leading to an ever-closer imitation of Him, not just in our outward actions but in our thoughts, our predispositions, our whole way of being. It is also experienced as an increased belief in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and an orientation towards that Presence as Teacher, Comforter and Guide in our world, as well as the conveyor of God’s love to us. ‘... the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.’ (Romans 5:5)
It is that love which leads us to unlock doors for others, and to play a part in releasing them from the constraints of whatever form of bondage their lives have led them into: to ‘set captives free’. In so doing, and in imitation of our Lord and friend, we are called to bring His healing touch to those held and bound within their prison cells of unremitting loneliness.
“The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free ...” (Luke 4:18)
With Jesus as our model and our companion, we can more accurately judge our relationships with others. We may not find it easier as we find it easy enough already: we are far too quick to judge others. To begin with the opposite may be true; the most noticeable difference may be that we find it more difficult to make our judgments because, perhaps for the first time in our lives, we realize that we do not really know who anybody is. And, in parallel with that realization may come another: - that we are not sure who we ourselves are.
Much of what we show to the rest of the world, even to our friends, bears little resemblance to the person we may have spent years keeping buried within our outer shell. For the most part this will not have been based on conscious decisions but on subtle influences, good and bad, real and imagined, inevitably woven into a lifetime of contact and interaction with other people; and such influence applies regardless of the length of our lifetime. A nine year old boy has experienced nine years of these influences, just as his ninety year old grandmother has experienced ninety. The cumulative weight and effects of the experiences and influences are nowhere near the same; the one, as yet, has found little reason to be anything other than who he seems to be, while the other, having been through all that life shows, offers, gives, takes away, and then hides, has reached a point where she knows there is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by being anything other than who she is. Outwardly, there appears to be little difference between the two persons in their ways of facing the world and the people they meet, but in this, as in our own knowing of ourselves and others at different stages of our spiritual journey, the actual difference is great.
People struggle to see the truth behind our own revealed image, just as we have difficulty seeing beyond the images revealed by them. In Newman’s words, ‘we make clean the outside of things’, and we maintain our selves’ anonymity as best we can.
We can befriend our anonymity in such a way that it becomes a substitute for friendship: it can even become our friend. An already existing prison of loneliness can shrivel still further into a self-constructed dungeon when someone befriends and defends their anonymity in this way. They are no longer unnoticed only, but through their interior hiding from the world, and through a longing that has been perverted to a desire to remain aloof and unseen, they have, to all intents and purposes, become unseen. They have become entombed in what they think they desire: they are unknown, and unseeable.
Here is where we may experience one of the many calls on our potential as followers and companions of Christ. We are needed to follow not only the actions, but the thinking and the feeling of our Lord. It is this calling that raised the mildly discomforting feeling within me when starting to write: a nervous feeling that, in being called “to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free”, we are also being called by Christ from within those entombed in their own loneliness.
He calls us to raise them from their place of death; to lead them into the freedom of life with Him, where they may hear God’s words spoken directly to them: -
‘Yes, I know what plans I have in mind for you, the Lord declares,
plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’
(Jeremiah 29:11)
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