If we were to name a few of the main threats to human existence today, loneliness might not be at the top of the list. We would most likely mention things like diseases, cancer, guns, looming climate concerns and maybe even a meteorite hitting the planet. However, according to the latest research, loneliness is worse for our health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness kills.
Recently, the UK cited loneliness as one of the top health concerns of our time and appointed a “Minister of Loneliness” to address the over 40% of adults who report chronic feelings of loneliness. Recent studies link loneliness to heart disease and depression. According to a Huffington Post article, our time has been called the “age of loneliness,” and though we seem more connected through social media platforms, these ways of connecting are often a painful reminder of our lack of tangible community ties and a poor substitute for flesh and blood interaction.
These discoveries illustrate one fundamental truth, our lives really do depend on establishing and maintaining meaningful connections with others. Without these connections, we literally fade. We become cut off not only from the relationships that bring us life, but from our own existence. Loneliness not only cuts us off from others but isolates us from ourselves.
We are wired for connection with other human beings, social endeavors that give us a sense of meaning and purpose. Group experiences that connect us to something greater than ourselves, things like love, compassion, empathy, kindness. These are the kinds of communal experiences that dispel loneliness and give our lives meaning and purpose.
But what is keeping us from connecting with others? Research shows that conditions such as shame and low self-esteem prevent us from seeking out group connections and from displaying the kind of vulnerability that enables us to connect at a deeper level with other people. But how do we overcome such debilitating conditions? A good first step is acknowledging our deep need for love. Dr. Brene Brown, whose work around shame has helped thousands of people begin to heal from the isolating effects of shame says it wonderfully:
“A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.”
As a pastor in an urban parish, I not only observed loneliness as one of the top spiritual sicknesses of our time, but I felt it, too. I developed a kind of chronic loneliness as I kept walls around my own vulnerability. Feeling as if I had to be a rock of strength and power for the community. It wasn’t until I began allowing myself to be seen, to fail, to become human, that I was able to begin to feel loneliness leave me and establish true human connection. I was a great example of how one can be surrounded by people and still have terrible feelings of being alone.
It wasn’t easy, but the walls of my own shame began to be dismantled as I began to work with some of our society’s most chronically lonely, abandoned and traumatized people, the homeless. As I opened up to their wounds, their pain and listened to their stories, I began to sense something greater, an awareness that we were all connected. We became one another’s healers.
Check out Sherry’s latest book: reflections from a pastor on homelessness and her spiritual journey.
Just by sharing the space of human warmth, compassion and kindness, I could see the difference communities can make in the lives of one another and of those who suffer from homelessness. Because it seems we all suffer from some kind of homeless feeling, it’s something we have deeply in common. While the issue is chronic for those who are on the streets, I found that even those who seem to have it all, good jobs, a house, opportunities and families, suffer from loneliness, a deep longing for a sense of home.
It seems we live in a time in which we are cut off from a sense of having a soul home, a spiritual home. The busyness of our lives, social isolation, shame, the lack of being part of a community that connects us to meaningful endeavors, these things create a kind of soul vacuum. I also noticed that when people became willing to risk making a home in their hearts for those who suffer, that their lives began to mysteriously change and take on a lasting and impenetrable meaning. They were able to make a soul connection.
In our communities of faith in which we served the homeless population and made an impact on the hunger in our community, there grew a deeper sense of belonging and even hope in the reality of a darkening world. What was even more miraculous is that I witnessed the lives of homeless people change. It didn’t unfold as I expected it would, my drive was always to do more when what was needed most from me was an exchange of the heart. In order for the homeless to believe that they could apply for life, they needed caring people, communities of warmth and hope so that they could see this mirrored in their own lives. I witnessed people getting off the streets, getting into housing because they felt safe enough to risk living again. They found what they did not have, acceptance and belonging. They found enough of a home in the hearts of human beings that they could risk what had been previously painful, having a home again.
As we are willing to make a home for one another in our own hearts, something mysteriously shifts in our lives, the pain of loneliness, despair, a sense of being cut off from companionship, these things begin to leave us as we risk loving those who have been labeled as rejected members of society. Because there is love inside of all of us that we have rejected as a basic need, as if it is dormant until we decide to risk loving.
When we make a choice to accept rejected people, something inside of us begins to shift, our perspective changes, we find a deeper level of self-acceptance. It is as if what we are giving to others becomes mirrored in ourselves. A light inside begins to come alive and warm us, teaching us that we are part of something much bigger and greater than our solitary pursuits. Love blooms and we begin to feel our worth. As the old hymn says about the birth of God’s flesh in the world, “Christ appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Something essential is born in us, God made flesh in the world, when we decide to connect to the greater love, God’s love in the world.
Our sense of self-worth blossoms when we reach out to offer love and kindness to others. There is something necessary about the act of loving others to a self-love being ignited in our own hearts.
Maybe there is no cure for loneliness, it’s certainly part of the human condition. But there is healing available to us all. Loving, especially those who are at risk and in need, makes us real and it’s a risk that we can’t afford not to take, our very lives depend on it. There is no shortage of the need for love in the world and that need is often the key to our own becoming.
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