Loneliness

Mark let’s talk about loneliness. Everyone suffers it. Change of life, times when you move away from friends or they from you. When your kids are no longer dependent on you. Crisis brings it too. Illness, disagreements, death. Suddenly those you hold dear are gone. I want to talk to you about that.

I wish you wouldn’t.

Why?

It’s not a subject I like to think about.

You think about it all the time. Everyone does. Whatever particular loneliness you are suffering, whoever you are, that loneliness is never far from your thoughts.

God this is a pretty depressing conversation. I’ve spent so much of my life with a negative outlook. But now that you’ve drawn that to my attention I’ve made a commitment to face life with a brave and cheerful face. I’m trying to learn a better approach. So why on earth are you going on about loneliness?? If everyone suffers from it, then why dwell on it? I’m sitting here in a bush hut, a beautiful place. The Weka Weka Valley in northern New Zealand. It’s summer and yet there’s a cold wind coming in from the coast. Fire burning in the old fire place, no power out here, just candles. Doors open to the evening. There’s a Tui sitting way up high above me in the Rata tree, singing the day to a close. I’m loving this, and you want to talk about loneliness?

I sure do.

Why?

Because it’s a human condition, just like hunger and tiredness, and the solution for hunger isn’t always to put food in your mouth, neither to sleep whenever you’re tired. Sometimes, hunger and tiredness are good, healthy, and can push you on. Loneliness is the same. It’s a natural state. The sharp feeling that comes from the absence of someone you love. Or even just the lack of company.

I get it God, you’re touching some raw and tender spots, so can we get this finished quickly? What’s your point?

The point is that loneliness is meant to push you to look for company from me. Real, human, warm conversational company. Not your ‘oh-God-in-heaven-your-servant-comes-to-you’ sort of company. And I don’t mean I want you to come to me and ask me to ease the pain of loneliness, that’s not my job, it’s yours. You are supposed to meet the need of loneliness by seeking actual human conversational company from me.

So many people, when they lose someone close, go looking for someone else to replace the gap, but that state, that normal human state that arises from the loss of someone close is meant to push you into seeking company from me.

Of course humans need other humans, but first and foremost they need me. Instead you all fill your lives with other people, making sure there are people close enough so that you never have to feel lonely. Without realising it your relationships become a panacea for loneliness. For instance parents end up in close relationship with their kids to ward off loneliness, they amass friends and casual contacts to ward off loneliness. That’s not my plan! Your kids are there for you to build into them, and as you do, you are built too. They’re not there to supply your need, you’re there to supply some of theirs, primarily to show them how to supply their own.

Here’s the secret Mark; your relationships with people are meant to be fuelled by your relationship with me. Not in some religious, ‘I’m-so-happy-I-met-Jesus-now-I’m-going-to-tell-everyone-else-about-it’ sort of way. Not that. That’s ok in small doses, but I’m talking about normality, about regular life.
I want you to seek a real, human relationship with me, one where we talk back and forward. When that happens it fills you up. When that happens you’ll begin to brim with the quiet confidence and balanced happiness that always comes to humans when you’re in close friendship, and eventually, in love. Only this time with the Creator.

The human animal is designed so that when lonely, which will happen often, you seek conversation - from me. Not primarily from others, FROM ME. I don’t want you coming to me and asking me for spiritual soothing and to take away the loneliness. You’ve seen that done in spiritual circles and if I’m asked I’ll do it. But it’s not what I want. I’m talking about allowing the loneliness to spur you on to an actual conversation with me. Having lost the conversation with someone else, to come looking for it, a real human, back and forward conversation with me.

Without that you’ll always be needy. Always missing and needing conversation with others. That’s not good. It will see your relationships come from the wrong place. From need. It will see your human relationships founded on the need for company. Whereas the plan is for you have your need for company met by me. Actual human conversational company supplied by God. You’re human, the only way you can receive company is as a human. Human sort of company. You’re designed to have that met by me.

And then you can go out and provide company to others and enjoy theirs without needing it. Your company with others needs to be founded on the desire to provide it, rather than the need to get it. You’ve seen that once before in someone. This ability I’m talking about to provide company rather than the need to take it. You saw it and it astounded you. A rare and beautiful strength, so attractive, but so unlike anything you’d ever come across that you didn’t understand it, didn’t know how to relate to it.

So be strong, be creative. Develop, build, live life. Enjoy. Be you. Do not be needy. Be in conversation with me. Get your need for company, actual human company, met by me. It’s not a stop gap, it’s what you were designed for.

Mark Holloway

THE FREEDOM DIARIES