I'm 88 and reside in a senior living facility. We used to have a small writing group that met weekly. The group no longer exists due to the demise of a couple of members. This place can foster and fester loneliness. (Side note: an oxymoron - certain death. Is there any other kindergarten?) But I digress. One of the group assignments was to write a song. We didn't have to write the music - just the lyrics. I have never been a devotee of the "country and western" genre, but I thought I'd try it to vocalize my loneliness since my wife of 52 years had died. Here it is.
This is so heartfelt and vulnerable. Thank you for sharing it.
It does kind of have the bones of a country song, I agree. Now I'm sad that your writing group is no longer because what you have presented here is magical. Please tell me you haven't given up writing!
"Now that I'm alone I'm looking for a phone with bars enough to reach the ever after." Ahhhh. That is gorgeous! And I'm certain that your wife is able to hear these words, if you speak them aloud to her. Our voices are so powerful! XO
This is such a lovely and hauntingly honest reflection. I don't presume to speak for my brother but he just received a dire diagnosis. It hurts my heart to imagine how true this could be as one truth about his long term marriage. In this case I know both he and his wife have felt it necessary to keep important parts of themselves private.
Pride can cause us to do some foolhardy things. It's the pebble in our shoe that keeps us from completing the journey. I speak from experience. I will offer a prayer tonight for your brother.
I am sooo very glad that you are here and sharing ….you truly are touching many of us…
“Pride can cause us to do some foolhardy things. It’s a pebble in our shoe that keeps us from completing the journey”. Oh my…i wonder how many reading this will be changed in the reading….
Richard, these words touch me deeply. After my parents died, I realized how I held back so much of myself from them. I wanted to do it over. I saw the love and openness they gave me and I held back. beautiful words.
I appreciate your sharing. As a parent of three I can assure that your parents knew more of your depths than you may think. When they are aware that you are not comfortable with sharing, they may just give you the space to be alone.
Thanks Richard. I’m 67 and parents to two adults. Great perspective because I see them, I see and am aware of more than they share. Great lyrics- so honest and authentic
Richard, how beautiful that you recognize being loved so honestly….what an amazing gift! May your precious One recognize the love you show her - fully - your true, true self.
As a single person with way too much time spent alone, I welcome a cacophony of people. I do, however, select what style of cacophony feels best. A few hours at the beach, Saturday morning at the farmer’s market, a birthday party for 2 dear kids I love (8 & 10). I’ll take it! 🎈
Writing from the road again, this time I am just now crossing back into Italy. Hello to everyone, and thank you Pádraig for this.
Loneliness was water I swam in as a child. Growing up adopted, I simply didn't know where I came from. Not in the blood sense. Though I am, by nature a curious and gregarious person, there has always been a weighty silence at the center of my Lisaness; a void where lineage should have been. I compensated the way many adoptees do. I decided friends were family. Chosen connection was enough. And it was. Until it wasn't quite.
Years later, in meditation, something shifted. I found myself unexpectedly compelled to thank my ancestors. People I couldn't name. Faces I'd never seen. But I felt, for the first time, that resilience and creativity don't just arrive from nowhere. They run in blood. They were gifted. That realization, I do not come from a void, was enormous.
Two years of that practice, and I found my birth mother.
Wiman's paradox, which I too have found to be true, the loneliness of not knowing held its own strange consolation… and it became the very thing that led me to discovery. That void, it turned out, was a door.
Lisa Marie – This is poignant and amazingly insightful. It touches upon Rilke’s “15th Sonnet to Orpheus” which I read last night. One of the stanzas reads:
*
"Establish kinship
with the pure, resisting rind,
with the juice that fills the happy fruit!"
*
The rind provides boundary, protection, and support for the fruit, as has your adoptive family.
*
The juice signifies the blood that flows through your veins, that nourishes your soul.
*
Together each is a gift that “reaches the place where seed transforms into summer”.
*
And now, Rilke’s 13th sonnet:
*
"Fullness of apple, pear and banana,
gooseberry … All this speaks
death and life in the mouth… I sense…
Read it on a child’s face
*
when it tastes them. This comes from afar.
Is it being slowly rendered nameless in your mouth?
Michael, what a gift. Rilke arriving with the rind and the juice, the boundary and the blood. That image of reading it on a child's face when it tastes something true for the first time. Yes. Thank you for this.
This resonates with me! I was not adopted, but there's much I don't know about my ancestry due to loss of records and family mystery. Just yesterday I said, "I don't know where I'm from." I more or less pass as white, but I've been asked if I'm Native American, South American, Mexican... My sister has said people have guessed she's Spanish, and asked her "the iconic question", "What are you?"... which made me laugh. Currently at the moment of turning toward chosen family... stand by...
I can remember the moment where I realized I was alone inside my own mind. I was seven, walking home from school on the north side of Chicago. The thought stopped me in my tracks. There was instantly something a little paradoxical—or a little comical—about it. Because once I became conscious of this fact, I knew that I’d already known it. I just had never presented it to myself as something to consciously consider until that moment. And even then, I don’t remember choosing to become conscious of it.
I felt so intrinsically lonely in this moment. Without all the language yet to articulate it, I sensed in a dense package of experience that what I experienced, I experienced alone; talking was and always would be translation. But with the loneliness and my awareness of the loneliness, I learned I could be intimate with myself in a way that no one else could be.
The purity of these thoughts have gotten muddier over time. I still find them foundationally true. But when I was thirteen and taking the train back from a friend’s house where we had smoked some pot, I was staring into my reflection in the window and noticing how, at night, I could only see parts of my face and the rest of my face was filled in by the moving landscape of the city. This also felt true—that I was somehow incompletely me without my environment. This was also a lonely feeling. I felt an ache in my heart that I knew would never fully heal. I wish I could remember the trajectory of the stoned thoughts I had after that because they led me to come home, sit my sister down, and explain to them a new theory I had of how minds work. They listened impatiently and with some admiration only to tell me afterwards that what I was describing was called the collective unconscious and I should read Jung’s description of it.
But my theory, which turned out to be another person’s theory—which actually kind of proves the theory—added complexity and mystery and paradox into the realization I had when I was seven. All alone. All connected. What I appreciate about today’s prompt is that, either way, there is loneliness.
How do I live well with this learning? My immediate response is that I am learning to live in a deferential relationship with my heart.
Jo, the seven-year-old on the north side of Chicago stopping in her tracks. That moment of suddenly knowing you'd always known. The loneliness and the intimacy arriving together, two sides of the same confounding coin.
What strikes me about your stoned train ride is that your mind went looking for company in exactly the right place and found Jung waiting there, already having thought your thoughts. Which, as you say, kind of proves the theory. We are most ourselves in the places where we most dissolve into something larger.
Living in deferential relationship with your heart feels exactly right to me. Not demanding it explain itself. Just following. How is your sister? I hope they are well, and you too. My joy to read your thoughts each week.
When I was younger, I thought loneliness was a problem to be solved. I’ve met some wonderful people by reaching out for solace. As I grow older, I understand more easily that it is just a part of me. Loneliness itself is my constant companion, the thing that can be counted upon, just like day or night. It has led me to its close cousin, solitude, which I need in turn. One drives me out to be with loved ones and one brings me home to myself.
Oh so beautifully written….each line filled with its soulful truth. I’m very grateful for you putting words to what i feel..still sometime ashamed of that loneliness as a constant companion, just part of me, as though it’s bad, wrong, I “shouldn’t be this way,,,,
It’s always been there …it’s existential yet real….then leading to that “close cousin…solitude”. YES, YES. I need it…
love love your last line…”one drives me out to be with loved ones and one brings me home to myself”!!
I was lonely and heartbroken in my first social work job in a country town with my first love in another state. The Chilean welfare worker saw my state and gave me ‘Tonight I can write the saddest lines’ .. by Pablo Neruda and that was it. Fabulous to have someone say those words’ she will be another’s.” We are still in touch but was the end of a great love affair.
Yesterday evening I sat on gold-licked tree-tickled grass in the park eating curry and drinking rosé wine with my sister and brother-in-law. In my field of view were three couples. At twelve o’ clock, a young man leaning over his girlfriend, kissing and caressing her. At two o’clock, a thirty-something couple, the woman massaging the man’s face resting on her lap. At six o’clock, a slightly older couple sitting in camping chairs, the man slicing a homegrown cucumber on a little chopping board and passing the slices to the woman.
For a moment, I envied all three couples in the different stages of their intimacy. Then I reminded myself that I was not alone, but had the fellowship of food and family and friends. Loneliness is rust and acid. I have been learning (I have yet to learn) to scour its corrosion with the steel wool and glistening oil of gratitude. And that too can hurt.
Loneliness, in my opinion, has two sides: it either gives you a space for deeper reflection, or it's kinda a shield protecting you from people. I've experienced both these sides, and just wanna warn that in the short term it's good, but not in the long run.
An epidemic of loneliness? Why do we have to pathologize loneliness? Need we wear masks and get a vaccine to protect ourselves? Loneliness is a portal.
Loneliness has been medicalized rather than weaponized. Research has found loneliness, not the momentary, but the continual day to day, to be as harmful to well-being as smoking. The digital age and social media have fostered an epidemic of loneliness among young and old.
Loneliness as a portal? Lots to contemplate about a mask to protect ourselves from it. Thanks for thought provoking..... I have a couple hour drive today... alone and not lonely
As a kid, loneliness was the fertile ground for poetry. Not just journaling, but something in me knew to use solitude as a place to listen and then write what was "heard." Today, I have less times of loneliness, but I seek aloneness much more.
Funny you should ask, Padraig. Just last night I was responding to a prompt, in a journal my son gave me, titled "I Want To Know Your Story Dad". The prompt was, "If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?" My response was: "It's not so much advice, but i would walk with him, guide him, be with him, enjoy him, love him. I think I was lonely (though always active) and lacking guidance". While I was writing that last sentence it felt like a Damascus Road revelation about myself. I have NEVER seen myself as lonely. And now I could feel it; inhabit a loneliness that has been inhabiting me for longer than I've known. And suddenly I could empathize more with my brother's loneliness, with whom I've had a fraught (understatement) relationship. Intellectually, I've known he is lonely, but there has always been so much anger, frustration and dismissal that, well, it stays in my head. I'm hoping this potent heart-seed of empathy for my brother, and myself, will germinate and mature into something loving - whatever that may look like.
Phil, Absolutely love your Damascus Road revelation — realization of your own loneliness — feeling this loneliness — a loneliness that you recognized as inhabiting you for longer than you’ve known — leading you to empathy. Thank you.
"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissable." - Carl Jung
The Landline
I have felt more lonely than ever in a room among people I have known all my life. Lack of affirmation of feelings through engaging conversations definitely triggers lonelieness in me.
This morning I was alone in my house, but not at all lonely. It was quiet and productive, without distractions. Laundry got folded, pantry cleaned out, I stopped to watch an osprey circling and thought what a great feeling that must be. The hydrangeas are so beautiful right now.
I had time so I finally sat down and called xfinity about our dead landline. I got connected with an agent named Khalid. He told me he was in Egypt. When I asked him his name, he spelled it out for me and said it meant immortal. I told him that I hoped to live to be at least 90. He said I surely would, with such optimism, that I believed him. With a patchy cell service, I was worried we would be disconnected. A landline can be a reliable lifeline. Noone else in our house seems to care about that but me. I explained that to Khalid and he immediately affirmed my concern. My husband had dismissed it earlier, by saying it was all connected to wifi, as he sat watching the golf, but Khalid told me it's not. It's a seperate landline cable. He was a good listener and reassured me that he would get the issue fixed. When I told him I was making a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich he said he was hungry and that sounded really good. He was curious how I knew they ate more nutella than peanutbutter in Egypt. Khalid is going to be a doctor and wants to work in Germany. He is in his fifth year of med school. I told him that my dad was an ENT surgeon. Khalid told me ENT and Neuro surgeons are two of the most difficult types of surgeries. I had never thought about that before. It gave me a proud moment to reflect on my dad. He told me that he loves traveling and meeting all different types of people. He's not so interested in politics, like me these days, but we both agreed on the world needing more compassionate and caring leaders who are working for the good of all mankind.
If we reverted back to landlines maybe we would sit still and listen more purposely to one another. I have learned that engaging conversations leave me feeling full. Last night it was at dinner with family members and today it was with Khalid.
Showing up in silence is the greatest combatant to loneliness I know. Whether truly listening when it is tough to hear, or knowing, over the many years I yearned and learned to sing, that my authentic voice was felt and heard in the silences between notes. In poetry, the words are as honest and powerful as the spaces between them. I cannot truly describe what I mean by this. But this is the paradox that has lifted me beyond loneliness from very early on.
In my tradition we have been talking about seeds lately, and I offer this piece from a series of cards I was introduced to about a Solitary Seed and good that can come of it. A friend introduced me to these cards, and they have brought great joy and spontaneity to my journey. The other day she pulled this one for me, and the verbiage that went with it could not have been more appropriate for me at the this stage of betwixt and between.
(I cannot find a way to attach the picture of the card.)
The title of the card is "When a Seed is Enough."
The explanation of the card is as follows:
Intention:
To trust the process.
To slow down and savor.
To sink into Earth's steady rhythms.
To wait like a seed, patient and ready.
Let it in:
Allow more time for nearly everything.
Follow your body's knowing before obeying the clock's schedule.
Come into stillness for rest and dreaming.
Value the fallow season.
Know your being is enough.
Live it out:
Let go of results.
Refuse to aim for efficiency, seek flow instead.
Plan ahead for long transformation cycles.
Sow care and deep healing for future generations.
Hold some spaciousness for mysterious timing.
On this day when our gospel reading continues the message about seeds and weeds...planting seeds and fighting weeds and the ultimate redemption that comes with the harvest, I thought it was fitting to ponder the value of a solitary seed and what lies ahead when it sinks into Earth's steady rhythm and is transformed.
Happy sowing, happy harvesting!
Melanie's website is https://listenforjoy.com/ if you are interested in learning more about the cards.
I'm 88 and reside in a senior living facility. We used to have a small writing group that met weekly. The group no longer exists due to the demise of a couple of members. This place can foster and fester loneliness. (Side note: an oxymoron - certain death. Is there any other kindergarten?) But I digress. One of the group assignments was to write a song. We didn't have to write the music - just the lyrics. I have never been a devotee of the "country and western" genre, but I thought I'd try it to vocalize my loneliness since my wife of 52 years had died. Here it is.
Regrets
I loved you best I could,
but it’s not the way I would
if I had a chance
to do it all again.
Didn’t love you as I wanted
so I’m feeling somewhat haunted
since you went away
Before I knew the truth.
You always gave your whole self,
and I held back my true self –
giving only pieces -
not fully being yours.
I should have been more honest
even though it seemed the hardest
thing I ever had to do.
Truth was harder than a lie
since I thought I couldn’t satisfy
the wrong-held, long held version
of who I had to be.
So wrong I was in judging you
who never did judge me;
just loved with full acceptance
the me I let you see.
Now that I’m alone
I’m looking for a phone
with bars enough to reach the ever after.
November 29, 2025
WOW, Richard!
This is so heartfelt and vulnerable. Thank you for sharing it.
It does kind of have the bones of a country song, I agree. Now I'm sad that your writing group is no longer because what you have presented here is magical. Please tell me you haven't given up writing!
"Now that I'm alone I'm looking for a phone with bars enough to reach the ever after." Ahhhh. That is gorgeous! And I'm certain that your wife is able to hear these words, if you speak them aloud to her. Our voices are so powerful! XO
zDanielle,
Thank you for the response. Yes, I do continue to write.
Wonderful!! Glad to hear it. XO
"Now that I'm alone I'm looking for a phone with bars enough to reach the ever after.” That line struck me as well, stellar writing!
What a lovely piece of introspection & love!
Celia,
Thank you for the response. Affirmation is always helpful.
This is such a lovely and hauntingly honest reflection. I don't presume to speak for my brother but he just received a dire diagnosis. It hurts my heart to imagine how true this could be as one truth about his long term marriage. In this case I know both he and his wife have felt it necessary to keep important parts of themselves private.
Joanne,
Pride can cause us to do some foolhardy things. It's the pebble in our shoe that keeps us from completing the journey. I speak from experience. I will offer a prayer tonight for your brother.
Dearest Richard ,
I am sooo very glad that you are here and sharing ….you truly are touching many of us…
“Pride can cause us to do some foolhardy things. It’s a pebble in our shoe that keeps us from completing the journey”. Oh my…i wonder how many reading this will be changed in the reading….
Saying prayers for you tonight.
Tammy,
Thank you for your prayers and kind words. If people are changed by my poetry I am grateful. But mostly I write that I might be changed.
Richard. This song? What a moving and vulnerable tribute. Sending you gratitude from Italy.
Lisa Marie,
Ciao. I appreciate the encouragement.
Thank you Richard for sharing this..a song like poetry bringing forth that deep well of love, loss, grief and loneliness. Alone… so purely spoken/sung
I wish someone could put just the right notes, and voice to share in the world ..it would console many.
Tammy,
You are so right. There are some things that can only be expressed poetically.
Music would be nice.
Richard, these words touch me deeply. After my parents died, I realized how I held back so much of myself from them. I wanted to do it over. I saw the love and openness they gave me and I held back. beautiful words.
Joy,
I appreciate your sharing. As a parent of three I can assure that your parents knew more of your depths than you may think. When they are aware that you are not comfortable with sharing, they may just give you the space to be alone.
Thanks Richard. I’m 67 and parents to two adults. Great perspective because I see them, I see and am aware of more than they share. Great lyrics- so honest and authentic
Richard, how beautiful that you recognize being loved so honestly….what an amazing gift! May your precious One recognize the love you show her - fully - your true, true self.
Patty.
Thanks for the response. Since you landed on "true self," may I presume to share another piece?
What is a “Self?
This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man…
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3.
Brother William wrote, “to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.”
But is that so? I must inquire.
“Self,” says I, “be you false or true?”
My “self” is sometimes me, and sometimes what I wish you’d see.
If I am true to self, am I being true to true,
or true to falsity?
I find that “self” is rarely fixed
and I am betwixt the me
I wish you’d see
and the me I sometimes be.
As night follows day, I can say
true self is mostly hidden,
and the false self comes unbidden
to the surface.
That self is weak and easily swayed
to put on clothes not mine, though frayed
from over-wearing.
My true self has no clothes.
It has no need to proceed
in false finery; no need to “seem”
but just to be.
So I conclude that William
is somewhat false and somewhat true;
as day is not night and night is not bright.
We need the dark to mark
the difference from the light,
to see that true illumines false
and that’s what gives us sight.
Richard Sumpter, April, 2025
Beautiful insight expressed in such a simple and powerful way 👏
Laura,
Thank you for taking time to write. We never grow too old to need encouragement.
thank you for creating and sharing this.
Beautifully written! “…with bars enough to reach the ever after.” Striking.
Katie,
I went to your substack and found Mathayu. I sent him a poem that countered somewhat his depiction of "time" as feminine.
Those are very beautiful and honest words. I wonder how your wife would respond to your words? She sounds like she was a forgiving woman.
It was through her love that I finally came to understand the meaning of God's Grace.- unearned, unconditional.
We are in a pandemic of loneliness.
Now there’s a paradox! Widespread loneliness!
Or is that an oxymoron?!
In the past we lived in tribes.
Maybe they were on to something, then.
Wouldn’t you rather be annoyed
in the cacophony of community
than feel the echoing pangs of lonliness?
How is it that social media
has only made us more isolated?
Words on a page without punctuation,
a face in a space on a box…
I miss the smell of the peanut butter sandwich that you ate for lunch.
I miss the feel of your fuzzy sweater with a hug.
Oh, to have a tribe of wisdom to
make an offering when feeling lost.
Oh, to have sweet tiny teeth and big brown eyes
smile up at you on a gloomy day.
Step out. Reach out.
Matter matters as “they” say.
Take a chance on human humus.
Presence is powerful and can
ease your empty pangs.
The last 2 lines are powerful. I never thought of the power of patience. And those patience have fulfilling purpose. Thank you.
“Wouldn’t you rather be annoyed
in the cacophony of community” Yes please!
No, that’s the loneliest feeling to be in the cacaphoney of too many people
I have felt that, for sure…but…
I am about to go to a family reunion of about 50 of my favorite peeps!
It will definitely be a cacophony community…of joy…
and then I will be very glad to return to my favorite quiet spot in my own home!
Exactly it Nancy, balance.
As a single person with way too much time spent alone, I welcome a cacophony of people. I do, however, select what style of cacophony feels best. A few hours at the beach, Saturday morning at the farmer’s market, a birthday party for 2 dear kids I love (8 & 10). I’ll take it! 🎈
Not really. Loneliness is not a strange bedfellow.
Being alone is a special treat…lonliness is a state.
hmmmmm, I am going to have to contemplate that. Thank you.
“The Gospel
Of Loneliness” (Pilgrim Press)
I’ll check it out. 👍👍 Perhaps it is built in in order to seek…
“Realization of our oneness in Christ is
the only cure for human loneliness.”
~ Caryll Houselander
Although there are days when I am nearly deafened by it
Nancy such vividness your words of wisdom.
Writing from the road again, this time I am just now crossing back into Italy. Hello to everyone, and thank you Pádraig for this.
Loneliness was water I swam in as a child. Growing up adopted, I simply didn't know where I came from. Not in the blood sense. Though I am, by nature a curious and gregarious person, there has always been a weighty silence at the center of my Lisaness; a void where lineage should have been. I compensated the way many adoptees do. I decided friends were family. Chosen connection was enough. And it was. Until it wasn't quite.
Years later, in meditation, something shifted. I found myself unexpectedly compelled to thank my ancestors. People I couldn't name. Faces I'd never seen. But I felt, for the first time, that resilience and creativity don't just arrive from nowhere. They run in blood. They were gifted. That realization, I do not come from a void, was enormous.
Two years of that practice, and I found my birth mother.
Wiman's paradox, which I too have found to be true, the loneliness of not knowing held its own strange consolation… and it became the very thing that led me to discovery. That void, it turned out, was a door.
Wishing everyone a luminous Sunday!
Lisa Marie – This is poignant and amazingly insightful. It touches upon Rilke’s “15th Sonnet to Orpheus” which I read last night. One of the stanzas reads:
*
"Establish kinship
with the pure, resisting rind,
with the juice that fills the happy fruit!"
*
The rind provides boundary, protection, and support for the fruit, as has your adoptive family.
*
The juice signifies the blood that flows through your veins, that nourishes your soul.
*
Together each is a gift that “reaches the place where seed transforms into summer”.
*
And now, Rilke’s 13th sonnet:
*
"Fullness of apple, pear and banana,
gooseberry … All this speaks
death and life in the mouth… I sense…
Read it on a child’s face
*
when it tastes them. This comes from afar.
Is it being slowly rendered nameless in your mouth?
Where words once were discoveries now flow,
startled in being freed from the fruit’s flesh.
*
Dare to say what you call apple.
This sweetness that first intensifies
so that, quietly formed in our tasting,
*
It becomes clear, alert, and transparent,
ambiguous, sunny, earthy, present -:
O experience, sensation, joy -, immense!"
Michael, what a gift. Rilke arriving with the rind and the juice, the boundary and the blood. That image of reading it on a child's face when it tastes something true for the first time. Yes. Thank you for this.
This resonates with me! I was not adopted, but there's much I don't know about my ancestry due to loss of records and family mystery. Just yesterday I said, "I don't know where I'm from." I more or less pass as white, but I've been asked if I'm Native American, South American, Mexican... My sister has said people have guessed she's Spanish, and asked her "the iconic question", "What are you?"... which made me laugh. Currently at the moment of turning toward chosen family... stand by...
It is an odd thing isn’t it Hannah? Those holes in the whole of the story…
"That void, it turned out, was a door."
I love this Lisa! I find the same thing. Thank you for sharing. XO
As Joe Campbell said, "Follow your bliss and doors will open that you didn't even know existed."
Hi Danielle! Thank you.
I can remember the moment where I realized I was alone inside my own mind. I was seven, walking home from school on the north side of Chicago. The thought stopped me in my tracks. There was instantly something a little paradoxical—or a little comical—about it. Because once I became conscious of this fact, I knew that I’d already known it. I just had never presented it to myself as something to consciously consider until that moment. And even then, I don’t remember choosing to become conscious of it.
I felt so intrinsically lonely in this moment. Without all the language yet to articulate it, I sensed in a dense package of experience that what I experienced, I experienced alone; talking was and always would be translation. But with the loneliness and my awareness of the loneliness, I learned I could be intimate with myself in a way that no one else could be.
The purity of these thoughts have gotten muddier over time. I still find them foundationally true. But when I was thirteen and taking the train back from a friend’s house where we had smoked some pot, I was staring into my reflection in the window and noticing how, at night, I could only see parts of my face and the rest of my face was filled in by the moving landscape of the city. This also felt true—that I was somehow incompletely me without my environment. This was also a lonely feeling. I felt an ache in my heart that I knew would never fully heal. I wish I could remember the trajectory of the stoned thoughts I had after that because they led me to come home, sit my sister down, and explain to them a new theory I had of how minds work. They listened impatiently and with some admiration only to tell me afterwards that what I was describing was called the collective unconscious and I should read Jung’s description of it.
But my theory, which turned out to be another person’s theory—which actually kind of proves the theory—added complexity and mystery and paradox into the realization I had when I was seven. All alone. All connected. What I appreciate about today’s prompt is that, either way, there is loneliness.
How do I live well with this learning? My immediate response is that I am learning to live in a deferential relationship with my heart.
Jo, the seven-year-old on the north side of Chicago stopping in her tracks. That moment of suddenly knowing you'd always known. The loneliness and the intimacy arriving together, two sides of the same confounding coin.
What strikes me about your stoned train ride is that your mind went looking for company in exactly the right place and found Jung waiting there, already having thought your thoughts. Which, as you say, kind of proves the theory. We are most ourselves in the places where we most dissolve into something larger.
Living in deferential relationship with your heart feels exactly right to me. Not demanding it explain itself. Just following. How is your sister? I hope they are well, and you too. My joy to read your thoughts each week.
"We are most ourselves in the places where we most dissolve into something larger.” I love this, thank you, Lisa Marie.
My sister is recovering well, thank you for asking after them. We’ll be together in Brooklyn in just under a week, doing what we do best :)
Hurrah for your meet up with your sister. I am so glad to hear they are doing well!
This is beautiful, Jo!
I, too, have learned I could be intimate with myself in a way that no one else could be. But I know, too, that we are never truly alone.
Thank you for sharing! XO
When I was younger, I thought loneliness was a problem to be solved. I’ve met some wonderful people by reaching out for solace. As I grow older, I understand more easily that it is just a part of me. Loneliness itself is my constant companion, the thing that can be counted upon, just like day or night. It has led me to its close cousin, solitude, which I need in turn. One drives me out to be with loved ones and one brings me home to myself.
Oh so beautifully written….each line filled with its soulful truth. I’m very grateful for you putting words to what i feel..still sometime ashamed of that loneliness as a constant companion, just part of me, as though it’s bad, wrong, I “shouldn’t be this way,,,,
It’s always been there …it’s existential yet real….then leading to that “close cousin…solitude”. YES, YES. I need it…
love love your last line…”one drives me out to be with loved ones and one brings me home to myself”!!
I feel and see the world deeply…
Thanks so much for letting me know that my words rang true to you!
Solitude, such a lovely place to be 💙
Sometimes evil wears the mask of beauty
And cards are stacked, though at first the game seems fair. Well,
I don’t believe much in rules
But its my duty
To take this time to let you know I care.
The road to evil is paved with good intentions
By those who care but couldn’t find the time
To let their love grow in new dimensions
They were much too busy
Hustling for a bitcoin or a dime.
It’s a shame to think of love in terms of safety
But the loss I feel makes it very clear
I hope you believe what I’ve been feeling lately
I’d try much harder if only you were here.
My love is not lost it only lacks direction
As these words are rolling round inside my head
So I send this poem to you with much affection
As I embrace loneliness in my bed
As I embrace loneliness in my bed.
- Dwight Lee Wolter (author, “The Gospel of Loneliness” -Pilgrim Press)
Beautiful Dwight.
Nod. Smile.
I was lonely and heartbroken in my first social work job in a country town with my first love in another state. The Chilean welfare worker saw my state and gave me ‘Tonight I can write the saddest lines’ .. by Pablo Neruda and that was it. Fabulous to have someone say those words’ she will be another’s.” We are still in touch but was the end of a great love affair.
I found a video with a reading of Pablo Neruda’s poem, it really was wonderful to hear the words spoken aloud.
Yesterday evening I sat on gold-licked tree-tickled grass in the park eating curry and drinking rosé wine with my sister and brother-in-law. In my field of view were three couples. At twelve o’ clock, a young man leaning over his girlfriend, kissing and caressing her. At two o’clock, a thirty-something couple, the woman massaging the man’s face resting on her lap. At six o’clock, a slightly older couple sitting in camping chairs, the man slicing a homegrown cucumber on a little chopping board and passing the slices to the woman.
For a moment, I envied all three couples in the different stages of their intimacy. Then I reminded myself that I was not alone, but had the fellowship of food and family and friends. Loneliness is rust and acid. I have been learning (I have yet to learn) to scour its corrosion with the steel wool and glistening oil of gratitude. And that too can hurt.
A big part of my loneliness is watching others and imagining what they have. You explore this so well!
Loneliness, in my opinion, has two sides: it either gives you a space for deeper reflection, or it's kinda a shield protecting you from people. I've experienced both these sides, and just wanna warn that in the short term it's good, but not in the long run.
An epidemic of loneliness? Why do we have to pathologize loneliness? Need we wear masks and get a vaccine to protect ourselves? Loneliness is a portal.
Loneliness has been medicalized rather than weaponized. Research has found loneliness, not the momentary, but the continual day to day, to be as harmful to well-being as smoking. The digital age and social media have fostered an epidemic of loneliness among young and old.
Loneliness is a portal to creativity. Do we also therefore “medicalize” creativity? From my book, “The Gospel of Loneliness” (Pilgrim Press UCC).
Loneliness as a portal? Lots to contemplate about a mask to protect ourselves from it. Thanks for thought provoking..... I have a couple hour drive today... alone and not lonely
Prophetic witness is always accompanied by loneliness.
this resonates with me. Thank you for this.
Yes
As a kid, loneliness was the fertile ground for poetry. Not just journaling, but something in me knew to use solitude as a place to listen and then write what was "heard." Today, I have less times of loneliness, but I seek aloneness much more.
Yes, Katie - using “solitude as a place to listen” feels so familiar to me. Also seeking aloneness resonates…
Funny you should ask, Padraig. Just last night I was responding to a prompt, in a journal my son gave me, titled "I Want To Know Your Story Dad". The prompt was, "If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?" My response was: "It's not so much advice, but i would walk with him, guide him, be with him, enjoy him, love him. I think I was lonely (though always active) and lacking guidance". While I was writing that last sentence it felt like a Damascus Road revelation about myself. I have NEVER seen myself as lonely. And now I could feel it; inhabit a loneliness that has been inhabiting me for longer than I've known. And suddenly I could empathize more with my brother's loneliness, with whom I've had a fraught (understatement) relationship. Intellectually, I've known he is lonely, but there has always been so much anger, frustration and dismissal that, well, it stays in my head. I'm hoping this potent heart-seed of empathy for my brother, and myself, will germinate and mature into something loving - whatever that may look like.
Phil, Absolutely love your Damascus Road revelation — realization of your own loneliness — feeling this loneliness — a loneliness that you recognized as inhabiting you for longer than you’ve known — leading you to empathy. Thank you.
"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissable." - Carl Jung
The Landline
I have felt more lonely than ever in a room among people I have known all my life. Lack of affirmation of feelings through engaging conversations definitely triggers lonelieness in me.
This morning I was alone in my house, but not at all lonely. It was quiet and productive, without distractions. Laundry got folded, pantry cleaned out, I stopped to watch an osprey circling and thought what a great feeling that must be. The hydrangeas are so beautiful right now.
I had time so I finally sat down and called xfinity about our dead landline. I got connected with an agent named Khalid. He told me he was in Egypt. When I asked him his name, he spelled it out for me and said it meant immortal. I told him that I hoped to live to be at least 90. He said I surely would, with such optimism, that I believed him. With a patchy cell service, I was worried we would be disconnected. A landline can be a reliable lifeline. Noone else in our house seems to care about that but me. I explained that to Khalid and he immediately affirmed my concern. My husband had dismissed it earlier, by saying it was all connected to wifi, as he sat watching the golf, but Khalid told me it's not. It's a seperate landline cable. He was a good listener and reassured me that he would get the issue fixed. When I told him I was making a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich he said he was hungry and that sounded really good. He was curious how I knew they ate more nutella than peanutbutter in Egypt. Khalid is going to be a doctor and wants to work in Germany. He is in his fifth year of med school. I told him that my dad was an ENT surgeon. Khalid told me ENT and Neuro surgeons are two of the most difficult types of surgeries. I had never thought about that before. It gave me a proud moment to reflect on my dad. He told me that he loves traveling and meeting all different types of people. He's not so interested in politics, like me these days, but we both agreed on the world needing more compassionate and caring leaders who are working for the good of all mankind.
If we reverted back to landlines maybe we would sit still and listen more purposely to one another. I have learned that engaging conversations leave me feeling full. Last night it was at dinner with family members and today it was with Khalid.
Showing up in silence is the greatest combatant to loneliness I know. Whether truly listening when it is tough to hear, or knowing, over the many years I yearned and learned to sing, that my authentic voice was felt and heard in the silences between notes. In poetry, the words are as honest and powerful as the spaces between them. I cannot truly describe what I mean by this. But this is the paradox that has lifted me beyond loneliness from very early on.
In my tradition we have been talking about seeds lately, and I offer this piece from a series of cards I was introduced to about a Solitary Seed and good that can come of it. A friend introduced me to these cards, and they have brought great joy and spontaneity to my journey. The other day she pulled this one for me, and the verbiage that went with it could not have been more appropriate for me at the this stage of betwixt and between.
(I cannot find a way to attach the picture of the card.)
The title of the card is "When a Seed is Enough."
The explanation of the card is as follows:
Intention:
To trust the process.
To slow down and savor.
To sink into Earth's steady rhythms.
To wait like a seed, patient and ready.
Let it in:
Allow more time for nearly everything.
Follow your body's knowing before obeying the clock's schedule.
Come into stillness for rest and dreaming.
Value the fallow season.
Know your being is enough.
Live it out:
Let go of results.
Refuse to aim for efficiency, seek flow instead.
Plan ahead for long transformation cycles.
Sow care and deep healing for future generations.
Hold some spaciousness for mysterious timing.
On this day when our gospel reading continues the message about seeds and weeds...planting seeds and fighting weeds and the ultimate redemption that comes with the harvest, I thought it was fitting to ponder the value of a solitary seed and what lies ahead when it sinks into Earth's steady rhythm and is transformed.
Happy sowing, happy harvesting!
Melanie's website is https://listenforjoy.com/ if you are interested in learning more about the cards.