What is this thing called Loneliness?
Author: Lucy Lopez

I’m sitting on a park bench during my lunch hour, slowly finishing my freshly constructed BLT sandwich. I’m eagerly waiting to sip on the coffee that I’ve bought from the café just across my office. It’s in a Styrofoam cup which I really resent. But there you are. At least I’ve got hot coffee.

I’ve had a loaded morning, people coming out of my eyes, ears, mouth, hands and video conferences. Everyone demanding something or some part of me. Even the technician who came to investigate my pc’s latest ailment (“unscheduled downtime” aka as crashing, freezing, or simply buggered), used the opportunity to remind me to attend his social club fund raising lunch for leukaemia on Friday. As a manager, I feel obliged to go. It’s a good cause.

I watch people walk by on the footpaths in between the grassy areas - a couple, a man with two uniformed children wearing hats who look like they are waiting for someone, an old woman with a patterned chiwawa, solitary business men in suits, not unlike me.

The coffee offers momentary comfort in this cold November day, but soon the warmth dissipates and I am feeling the same feeling I have felt in between the long spells of work, sleep, socializing and weekend golf. A feeling that not even the spotless blue sky drenched in mid-day sun can persuade to go away. I try to tell myself that it has nothing to do with Heather having left me three years ago. The funny thing is, it’s a feeling that was there even while Heather was in my life. Actually, it’s not funny. It’s scary.
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I said a prayer this morning. I said it for my Mum who died last October. I miss her terribly. I’ve been having dreams about her. Bad dreams. They keep me awake some nights. She’s always running away from me in my dreams. It’s really weird, because we used to be so close. She was one person I knew loved me no matter what. I have two kids and they sometimes ask me why I look so sad, even though I try to look un-sad. And then they say: It’s because of Nan isn’t it Mum? You miss her, don’t you? My six year old son always says: Mum, Nan’s in heaven you know. Nobody in heaven is sad. Come on old Mum, cheer up! I always have to laugh when he says that last bit.

But in no time at all, I am feeling this ache again, right there just below my heart. I know this ache. I used to get it when I was in grade three and my best friend Macy would toss me a triumphant: You’re not my friend anymore. Macy would do that about two times a week. I’d feel awful and go home crying to Mum: Macy doesn’t like me anymore, and Mum would say: Do you like Macy anymore? And I’d find myself saying slowly, in between sobs, No..oo…oo. And at about this point, I’d look up at Mum and I’d see her trying to look serious, but really, she was trying not to smile.

She was wise, my Mum. I miss her wisdom, especially now, when I need to make some decisions and could do with some understanding. None of my friends understand me really. Not even my best friends whom I’ve known for years.

I guess I was feeling that ache when I prayed this morning. I guess, I prayed for me really, not for Mum.
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We all have felt it at some point in our lives – that feeling that waits there for us, like a burglar keeping watch, unseen yet seeing, ready for those brief moments when everyone in the house is away, or asleep. Ready to enter and empty. We often associate it with loss, of someone or something special in our lives. But we don’t realize that the ‘burglar’ is in fact an in-house resident and has always been in the house, not so much in hiding, as (deliberately) hidden by us, locked away in an unused room, where, being out of sight, we hope he stays out of mind.

Loneliness is not the space left by a special something or someone. It is not the emptiness resulting from something or someone having vacated a prime position in our lives. It is not the absence of something or someone with whom we have shared intimate times, gone through experiences that are uniquely ‘ours’, communed in moments of sheer beauty and awe, overcome insurmountable hardships or co-created new life.

These experiences and moments were full and complete in themselves and remain an indelible part of our consciousness. They cannot therefore be 'absent'. They are of the past, but they have not left a space. Rather, with our cravings, we create new spaces which we wish to fill with more such experiences. And until they are 'filled', these empty spaces evoke a sense of dread or fear within us. These feelings are some of our aversions. But neither our cravings nor aversions are our loneliness.

Rather, our loneliness is a calling to encounter and experience those aspects of ourselves that we have failed to get to know, aspects that, like the in-house resident, we have tried to put out of sight and out of mind. We may have noticed that no matter what we try to hide him with, whether with a (new) romantic interest or a (new) friendship or a (new) hobby or a (new) challenge or a (new) job, he reappears time and time again. He is unshakeable! He is always there! He is a part of who we are and we might as well get to know him.

The truth is, we are already whole, complete. But we fail to experience this wholeness, this internal unity. We have been socialized into believing that we are only complete when we are with another, or another thing. Gerry McGuire’s magical moment: You complete me! Even signed to demonstrate its universality! The truth is, alone and together, we are whole. We are complete.

Loneliness is an invitation to encounter ourselves, our fuller, greater, expanding selves. What we call loneliness, and experience as an emptiness, an aching or a longing, is in fact a calling to the fullness of who we truly are!
© Lucy Lopez 2003






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Lucy Lopez mentors and facilitates workshops for Corporate and Private groups and individuals in the area of Personal/spiritual Growth, drawing on Buddhist, Christian and Hindu frameworks, as well as her background in Science and Education. She also writes and publishes a free weekly ezine, A Drop of Light. To subscribe Email: inspiredpresence@yahoo.com Visit: http://www.geocities.com/inspiredpresence/

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