Loneliness and Joy - My Spiritual Take

I remember, one day at XLRI campus while walking towards my classroom in the new learning centre, I had seen a parrot sitting at the edge of the road, with its head bowed and eyes partially shut. Out of curiosity, I stopped and went nearer and realized that it wasn’t moving. It tried flapping its wings meekly and moved a few inches, and stalled again. It was perhaps at the end of its life. I started to move again as I was getting late to my evening class where I was to make a presentation on the research paper I had read that day. I couldn’t, however, notice the flock of parrots that were cheerfully flying across. I couldn’t erase the sight of that little parrot, away from the flock, sitting alone on the ground waiting for it all to end, coping up with stillness, perhaps unable to comprehend why it couldn’t soar higher again and where the strength of its wings vanished. And, wondering perhaps where his companions of those joyful days were.

When I hear about the lonely deaths that COVID patients have had to go through, I wonder if they experience the pain of being away from the loved ones more than the physical agonies that the disease brought to them. I read somewhere that people suffer anxieties about death but more than the death itself, the idea of dying alone can be overwhelming.  Loneliness is not easy to deal with. And, not just a death bed but while we are alive.

Loneliness is not coupled with distress. People have experience loneliness when they have been at the pinnacle of success, when they have observed their dreams come true and when their names and faces are splashed all over and they have been recognized, adored and adulated by strangers across the globe. Loneliness is experienced by people who are single, in relationships, married, or even in the company of large and loving families. We may be alone in crowds and not really alone even when we are physically separated from everyone else. It perhaps is a spiritual state of our being that determines how lonely we are. There is a spiritual void that we are born with – unless that is filled, we can’t escape the feeling of loneliness. We may try filling this void with more work, more people, more engagements, more success, more accomplishments, but none of these is large enough to really be able to fill the gap – the gap of our needs of being understood, of being loved, and, of being accepted just as we are.

Yes, that’s the crux of the problem. We all want to be understood, we want to be loved unconditionally, and we want to be accepted just as we are with all of our flaws and imperfections. We do get some of these needs met at different times by different kinds of people in our lives. For example, we may not be lonely when we are among our colleagues and we believe we are being understood, including the jargon that we may use. Workplaces, therefore, do provide for shelters at times. We may not be lonely at home and I company of our friends from childhood, as we are loved by our spouses and children and are accepted. But as can be easily observed, these are not permanent shelters. We may not be always understood at our workplaces – that is why several people fall out of love from the workplaces where they may have spent decades and where they may have created a blazing trail of commercial success. From being celebrated at our offices, we may soon move to a place of being merely tolerated and, thus, work that provided escape from loneliness may soon become a lonely place itself. Many are dissatisfied at work and find solace in their relationships with friends and family. Some of us therefore never grow out of our adolescence and continue to find refuge in friends that have shared lives in the most carefree days of our lives. Love from family members can be a great source of strength against the world and against the forces that make us feel alone. Absence of loving relationships with family members then causes intense loneliness. Lack of love at home can be due to many reasons, but one of the most prominent one is that of being self-centred. Seeking service and attention when we fail to serve and give attention can soon make even the most loving family members to look away. Enhanced perceptions of our own contribution to the family while diminishing other people’s contributions can make us pity ourselves and make us believe that we are not being fairly treated by so called our own, but the reality could be very different. It is us who may be selfish and thus may sour precious and irreplaceable relationships. Similarly, we are always in pursuit of acceptance – from colleagues, relatives, communities and societies around us. Finding acceptance in this broken world that excels in rejections can be quite futile. Acceptance can also be fleeting and may require us to keep running tirelessly to please others while compromising on our own needs and values. Such unending labour may sooner or later tire us and brings us to a lonely place full of complaints and regrets.

How then do we move from a lonely place to that of promised land flowing with joy. Here we must make distinction between joy and happiness – joy is more an internal fountainhead that keeps us going even when external circumstances don’t, whereas happiness is dependent on our external circumstances and is often temporary. For joy to replace loneliness, we need to find to find a constant in our lives – someone who understands, who loves unconditionally and who accepts us just as we are. And, yes, you guessed it right, this description perfectly fits our creator, our Lord and Saviour Jesus. The Bible is full of words from God that shows He understands us like no one else, He has fashioned our bodies, He has thought and planned for our lives even before we were conceived in our mothers’ wombs. He knows every thought of our minds and understands the struggles that we go through. In His companionship, we will not miss someone who understands us. The Bible also tells us how God loves us unconditionally just because we are His creation, His sons and daughters through our faith in Him. He loves to sing songs over us, He plans for our good, He provides and protects and He walks intimately with us even when we do not acknowledge His presence and blessings in our lives. God loves us. The Bible also tells us that God accepts us just as we are – sinful, disobedient, self-destructive, arrogant and unwise. Yet He calls us His own and longs for our company and when we repent and know Him as our Father, there is much rejoicing in the heaven.

Loneliness, on the other hand, can help us realize our inadequacies in dealing with it. It can make us know that our material possessions, relationships built on give-and-take transactions, and acceptance based on utilitarian yardsticks are unable to fill the gap in our spirit. This can lead us to a path of seeking the true source of joy, a spiritual journey that God has promised to make fruitful. The Bible declares that those who seek Him shall find Him. So, in some sense, loneliness may be an obstacle placed in our paths for us get redirected towards God. Caveat here though, this may also be the time when anxiety, worry, fear, frustration, despair and anger may get better of us and lead us to destruction. The path we choose – of seeking spiritual fulfillment and growth or of self-destruction – will determine if we eventually overcome or succumb to loneliness.

Why does believing in Christ take away loneliness? In the book “Life Together”, Dietrich Bonhoeffer describes the sacrifice of Christ not just for atonement of sin, and as widely regarded as a price for our healing from sicknesses, but also for overcoming loneliness as Jesus took on our loneliness and exchanged it with constant companionship with the Holy Spirit at the cross. He was indeed lonely at the cross when all His disciples deserted Him, all those who crowded around Him mocked Him and cast lots for His clothes, and at His death, he did experience that even God the Father had forsaken Him. His carrying the burden of loneliness makes us eligible for the reward of everlasting companionship through our faith in Jesus.

Loneliness is spiritual and thus cannot be omitted by material or worldly resources. It arises from our spiritual needs of being understood, being loved and being accepted, which are all fulfilled through our spiritual intimacy with God, our creator and our savior. Loneliness is thus not insurmountable, it is not scary and it is certainly not incurable. A closer walk with God in faith is all it takes.