loneliness

Loneliness: such a charmingly provocative topic. But I don't mean this in the romantic sense. I'm speaking in the most general sense you can think of.

I said I would make it a point to blog about a not-so-good day. Which today was. Until I decided to blog. When I start to blog things get better - firstly, I'm no longer so focused on myself. Secondly, all the good things that happened today come to mind - because I would really rather talk about the good stuff than the bad stuff. Thirdly, I'm forced to interact with a mental audience. But today I am set to talk about my bad day. So that is what I will do.

Well, it was one of those days with moments where I wondered whether it's worth it to fight it out when there doesn't seem to be much fighting you can do. When the "getting better" takes so long that you wonder whether you can endure the waiting. And the worst thing, feeling horribly lonely. It is funny how you can talk to people online and have excellent conversations, but sometimes it also makes you more lonely - maybe it whets your appetite for embodied community. That's why movies don't help either. You can lose yourself in someone else's life, but only until you have to return to your own. Same goes for books.

I think that's why we're so lonely in the "communication" age. Myriad forms of communication have been propagated but they're like canned communication. Like fixing Campbell's soup or ramen noodles rather than cooking a real meal. Like recombined milk - dried out and then re-liquidated, our voices and photos and letters are pixelated for teleportation and reassembled on the other side, and a lot is lost in the process.

It is funny when you get on Facebook and you're feeling rather lonely and everyone else looks lonely too. Facebook. Myspace. Online networking. Communities for lonely people.

I think we're all so lonely because we seldom take time to pursue the purest, most whole form of community. We've dumbed down communication because so many things have take our time we don't have time to invest in one of the things we most need. I love love love being able to send people random messages/posts on Facebook in the middle of the day (or night, for that matter) to tell them how much I care for them or what a difference they've made in my life. But we can't live on candy.

If we were dying...slowly dying inside - and we decided to find medication - we would be paying all we had to get the best possible form of that medication, rather than some cheap copy. This is not to say that I have not been blessed by chatting or emailing. They have been an unspeakable blessing to me during this time when I haven't been able to get out much because of my health condition. God has used it in amazing ways. All the same, I feel as if they are a mere taste of 24-karat communication - what God meant for us to have. And our culture sanctions all too well medicating our needs for community - connection with other human beings - mediated by electronic devices.

I really want to emphasize I don't think cell phones or IM or online networking or emails are bad at all. I mean...what if your best friends (and some of the biggest blessings in your life) happen to live on the other side of the world! What I do want to say is that we can't live solely on this form of communication. :)

But I think connection is a big part of what we lost in the Fall. Even when we can have embodied presence, we're still working to repair the ruins from the Fall; working toward that 24-karat connection - the original wholeness of Eden. Loneliness is difficult. Working at relationships may be harder. I love the lyrics by The Fray's "Over My Head" -

Let's rearrange
I wish you were a stranger I could disengage
to say that we agree and then never change.

Any time I start on invest in relationships it feels like going diving. Relationships don't succeed when people don't mutually die to themselves, don't pursue understanding, don't work to communicate. Disagreements are the cracks we sustained in the Fall...ever after in our interactions with each other we've had to work to formulate the glue. (He he...this is truly the day of mixed metaphors.)

Sometimes I just wonder, though, what this wholeness we're working towards in relationships looks like. How does God picture that wholeness? Does He have a dream for us?


All this said, today was a hard day. I would make a bad ascetic. No shutting myself in a cell for contemplation. It's so funny - when I'm alone, not by choice, I want to be with people. And when I'm with people, a lot of the time I want to run away and contemplate.

I've been thinking lately and wondering why "Life is Beautiful" is one of the most popular movies of all time. You have this guy, living humanity's worst nightmare, and he's rejoicing throughout it all. How is this so attractive? How ironic that this is the very life God called us to - rejoicing in trial. The question is, living our worst nightmare, would we do the same? I think we have the chance to prove the message of this movie everyday.

And then I started to wonder whether it would be worse torture to be shut up alone all your life, or to be put in a concentration camp with your fellow man.