Loneliness & Soul Friends

“Loneliness is not simply about being by oneself, but about being unable to communicate the things that truly matter to oneself.” – Michael Meade

“My friend is one who knows my song and sings it to me when I forget” – anonymous

(Don’t have time to read? Listen to this 9-minute audio during your next commute or nature walk!)

“How are you?” her eyes ask even more sincerely than her voice – searching in their warm and gentle way for something real. I pause to find the exact words that came to me the night before. “I’m desperately unhappy,” I reply, feeling the truth well up from the soft place underneath my lungs. “And I’m coming to understand it’s not just my pain, but the pain of living in the world as it is.” I see something pass over her face – surprise, sadness, relief. Her eyes well. “Me too,” she whispers.

I have heard that loneliness is now epidemic, affecting both the elderly and the young, and quickly becoming a community health crisis. Organizations like “Sidewalk Talks” are training volunteers to set up listening stations on the street where passerby can sit and be deeply heard. In a recent newsletter, they recount the story of one volunteer being thanked by a man who had just gotten out of prison. The judge wasn’t there, neither was the jury, nor his family. Just the guys on the corner who got him into trouble in the first place. This was the first time in ages he had felt any sense of connection or encouragement.

Why is loneliness so prevalent when most of us are surrounded by relationships with family, friends, and coworkers? Why do these connections not ease the deeper sense of isolation, vulnerability, and meaninglessness? According to Michael Meade, one of our deepest needs is not for social status, lucrative work, or material comforts, but for Anam Kara, the Gaelic term for soul friends – those who see what is written on our heart and can help nurture its radiance. Our loneliness, insecurity, and anxiety are not so much about being isolated from other people, but about being isolated from the truth of our own souls. And because we have been raised to look outward for fulfillment we search, often fruitlessly, for someone else to tell us who we are. This is inherently problematic because what we tend to see in others are reflections of ourselves, so if the people nearest to us are different from us in significant ways, neither we nor they feel seen or validated, and our collective ache and isolation continue.

So how do we figure out who we are and what matters if we always feel like the odd-ball, the misfit? Or if we are working so hard to fit in that we don’t even know we aren’t being ourselves – we’re only aware of a subtle, pervasive ache? We find it in the very thing we are trying to escape: our loneliness. Or, better put, our solitude. Susan Cain in “Quiet”, her best-selling book on the power of introversion, explains why we are so hesitant to spend time alone and why, for many of us, it is so key to our health on every level. Our culture is based on Christian values of generosity and selflessness, demonstrated by constant outward gestures like organizing, care-taking, and ministering. Those who seek solitude, service, and/or spiritual connection in other ways can feel selfish, flawed, and unworthy. Research shows, however, that the depth, focus, and unencumbered receptivity found in times of solitude are powerful catalysts for innovation, creativity, and for many of us, spiritual connection.

Whether naturally outgoing and sociable, or more withdrawn and contemplative, we can find reflections of who we are adequately, and sometimes even most effectively, in nature around us and in what we find looking back at us from our own emptiness. Finally slowing down, turning inward, and leaning into my solitude has been life-altering for me. Accepting the blessing of having few time obligations outside my work, minimal social pressures, and no externally-imposed expectations on what I do with my life, I have adopted the same routine I always do in my happiest moments: staying up late into the night, taking walks in the hills, and reading and writing about my individual relationship with what is timeless. The energy, grounding, and fulfillment I experience from spending time this way is rippling out into how I do my job, how I spend my free time, and what I choose to share with others. And while I still feel sad quite often, this is the least lonely I’ve felt in years.

Ironically, this is exactly the place from which to find soul friends. I recently spent a day wandering the damp and misty hills with a woman I met through my program. It took just a few words of my grief and longing to open her heart to her own loneliness, to her sense of living as a shell. It was as though each relationship and career path she pursued presented a veneer of fulfillment that on closer examination proved to be as empty as she felt. We shared our mutual sense of heart-break and hopelessness over how to live a meaningful life when so many hours are committed to earning a livelihood in a world so full of busyness and noise, and so much collective grief and rage registering in our open hearts. But because my words resonated with her being, it suddenly didn’t matter whether we resolved any of these dilemmas. What mattered was that I was speaking the truth of my soul’s lament and longing, being heard, and feeling my words shifting something in the heart of a soul friend. I recognized the courage, resilience, and resourcefulness in my story and felt clear and emboldened in a way I hadn’t in my solitude. And the synergy of our individual hearts felt ripe with a hope magnified by our togetherness.

Back in my room, the sadness returned. I had been shown who I am in sharing the empathy, curiosity, and vulnerability of my friend; in the lush moss springing to life on the twisted oak boughs; in the flock of wild turkeys safe with their tribe. Now I was being shown who I am not in the idle conversation, the TV-binging, and the constant activity of my housemates. It breaks my heart to see with such increasing clarity what I am here to do, to feel it straining just beneath the surface ready to burst into life at the slightest invitation, and to tuck it away, like an exotic bird in a dark corner, because I do not yet know how to live more fully into that truth.

In times when we are shifting or must be around what doesn’t resonate with us, we are in danger of losing ourselves and experiencing an even deeper depth of alienation. Choosing solitude at these times is key – the silence, stillness, and space to listen to and be led by who we are not just as reflected by the outer world, but alone in our core. Increasingly, I choose to meditate instead of snack, so I can stay present and go deeper. I choose to write instead of watching a show, so I can share my truth with others. I choose not to shame myself when the response to my playfulness is cold or sarcastic, when my curiosity and observations fall flat, because I need to be my own best friend. And when I choose to eat too much quiche and ginger bread, to get lost in a spiral of shame or hopelessness, to check-out or antagonize others, I try to remember that these are also well-intended efforts to feel nourished and safe.

Each night I hold candles before my eyes and speak into my own face in the mirror, flickering in the darkness: “I see you. I am amazed by your determination to love me. I honor your struggle. And no matter what, I will not abandon you. This time, I’m staying.” In my solitude, I am investing in my relationship with my own soul – the one thing I can rely on to protect, nourish, and cherish me as all things fall away – even my soul friends.

The medicine for ourselves and the world all starts here.

Nancy

“That fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.” – Proust on the relationship between writer and reader.

“Writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around when one writes, why even night is not night enough.” – Kafka