I do not feel lonely today. But I've known loneliness, and I know that many people feel loneliness most painfully this time of year. Memories of old family scenes are most vivid during this season. Holiday bustle and all the good cheer make matters worse when one is not sharing it, especially when one is alone. If I have a nerve of loneliness in me, it's likely to be inflamed during December.
No age group has a monopoly on loneliness. The middle school child who sits alone at a lunch table bears the loneliness of shame. Or the old person sitting alone in her apartment. I felt most lonely in my 20s. In older age it may be more like a deep ache, especially when loneliness is related to grieving a significant loss. Missing a spouse or dear friend now gone, or a child, one who loved Christmas -- even if that child is you yourself, last seen long ago. Such losses can never be replaced, and we feel them as loneliness.
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Since loneliness is so often felt for dear ones not present, the mixture of sadness, anxiety and isolation that comprises it will be unique for each of us. Loneliness comes with as many faces as the people we are lonely for. Our loneliness is personal. But underneath, I wonder if there is not a common core: I feel invisible. I am not being seen.
I may have many "friends" on social media, or neighbors and acquaintances I speak to, but my underlying loneliness is for someone who really sees me, gets me; another person who listens to me, with whom I can talk freely, not trying to impress or pretend. When I'm missing such a person in my life, then I do not feel seen, known for who I most deeply am. That's a profound loneliness that can be glossed over but not truly satisfied by having playmates.
Loneliness can be a biological signal that something is wrong -- like a chest pain. There are medical conditions linked to chronic loneliness, depression and anxiety being most common. Loneliness can hijack your brain and convince you that nobody likes you, you are not worth loving. That feedback loop is fatal: I'm lonely, so I'm not worth anybody's attention, so I'm ashamed to reach out, so I seal my loneliness.
But when U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called loneliness a "public health crisis," recognizing that loneliness has become an epidemic in our country, he emphasized the crucial truth that loneliness carries no stigma. Feeling lonely does not mean there's something wrong with you! It does not mean you're not likable or worthy of friendship.
Our society has changed in ways that make it harder to connect personally. Neighborhoods are now in flux, there are isolating habits held over from the pandemic, eyes are glued to screens and ears to cellphones -- the emotional costs of modern life are high. It all adds up to isolation and distrust -- especially distrust. The trusted institutions and traditions that until recently held people together are disappearing or are no longer of interest. Loneliness: it's not just you, and it's not a disgrace.
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So then, when loneliness is real for you, what do you do about it? Two basic things up front: Do not feel sorry for yourself, and do not reach for the bottle!
That said, if it's true that the rock-bottom reality of loneliness is not being really seen, your unrepeatable selfhood having no witness, then loneliness is not simply emotional stress or social malaise, it is a soul sickness. And that gives us a start on finding a pathway of healing.
Let me put a foot in the path with the hope that you will take it farther.
If you are lonely for a dear one who is gone, compose poems or prayers of gratitude for them. When emotion-laden memories come into your mind, welcome them as you change the sadness and regret into thanksgiving. Express your thanks with the prayer or poem, and do so again and again. Memory is like a painting, and you are the artist. Make it beautiful, let it light up your mind.
Do this, too: Identify that part of yourself that the person brought alive in you, then consciously nurture it. One woman did that gracefully. "He made home feel like home for me," she said after her husband died. She found an animal companion, not as a replacement, but because having a dog made home feel more like home for her.
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If the lonely feeling is less specific and more a general feeling that something is lacking, what I've found is that it's a mistake to look for friends or contacts to fill what's missing in my life. That doesn't work. Rather, you yourself be the friend you want and are looking for. When was the last time you took more than a few seconds, sitting down, to ask another person how they are doing in a way that let them know you really cared?
Have you listened to Carrie Newcomer's song "Betty's Diner"? The song pictures a warm and safe place for people whose stories are fragile, who long for acceptance and embrace. "Miranda works the late night counter, In a joint called Betty's Diner ..." The refrain goes like this:
"Here we are all in one place
The wants and wounds of the human race
Despair and hope sit face to face
When you come in from the cold.
Let her fill your cup with something kind
Eggs and toast like bread and wine
She's heard it all so she don't mind"
When you come in, Miranda sees you, she really sees you and fills your cup with something kind, something holy. Miranda is too busy serving up kindness to be lonely! I want to be like her this season.