Is Loneliness Optional?

Here's a blindingly brilliant stunner for you: "A key piece to solving loneliness? Friendship."

I got a good eyeroll out of that headline. But I also got a little ticked-off at the arrogance of the assumption.

The cited article's opinion seems to line up with that of a certain blogger I admire for his wisdom and insight who once asserted that loneliness is a choice. I respectfully disagree.

Like many widows, especially those of us without children, I have earned a master's degree in Loneliness. This is not a complaint but simply an accepted facet of my new normal. Add in pandemic shut-downs and a few medical glitches, and a person can be involuntarily locked into a solitude they never asked for.

I have many strong and enduring friendships. I also have some great in-laws, a caring church family, and a tendency to strike up conversations wherever I happen to be. These are all essential and supportive assets in the life of a single person. But as wonderful as my friends are, they are not there at 9 p.m. when the shadows creep in and the suppressed emotions of the day bully their way to the surface.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune article that I quoted above highlights a 30-year-old local transplant who pushes past her own introversion to form a "large social circle" via work contacts, gym connections, and volunteer experiences. An easy fix, right? But hers is a different storyline than that of the widowed retiree.

I go to the gym. I do volunteer work. On antsy summer afternoons or evenings, when friends are off cheering on their little league grandkids, I've taken myself out to Music in the Park events, art shows, farmers markets. I make the effort. Yet sometimes the sting of wandering alone through a preoccupied crowd is more painful than a quiet day with the cats.

All of this got me thinking about what loneliness is. And what it isn't. This is what I came up with:

•Loneliness isn't a character flaw or a weakness. It's the absence of desired company.

•Loneliness isn't a malignant attitude. It's an incidental fact of existence for many at some point in life. After all, time and chance happen to us all (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

•Loneliness isn't an act of perpetual self-indulgence. It's that heaviness that sits in the pit of your stomach on the way home from church, as you covet the missing Sunday afternoon family activities and picture the empty dinner table awaiting you.

•Loneliness is not stupidity, ignorance, or a sense of entitlement. And very seldom does laziness figure into it. It's a set of circumstances for which prayer and a call to a lifelong friend a thousand miles away can be beautiful antidotes.

Perhaps that final point should be the bottom line of this little treatise: Some situations invite us to reach Up, and to reach out. And though not permanent solutions, these measures bring lovely, in-the-moment comfort.