On Friday, the lake shimmered. The company was ideal. We talked about how we could taste the love baked into the food. The kids got along and were all smiles. Then Saturday came, and my kid did not get along. She cried for an hour. She pushed me away when I reached out to hold her. She stomped her feet and screamed so loudly in an ice cream shop that everyone scattered. Looking back now, her wild mood swing seems more like a symptom than a cause. The energy had shifted that morning. What we said and did was still lovely, but we (at least I) got lonelier for a little while.
We call loneliness an epidemic, but I don’t experience it like a disease I have or don’t. It can come one hour and be gone the next. It can be criminal in its ability to leave me begging for a release from its grip. But it isn’t permanent. Loneliness, for me, is closely related to how I am thinking about myself and the world. Loneliness feeds on thought.
I’ve been focused this week on this relationship between my thoughts and how alone I feel. Three places I’ve landed:
1) We are more than our words and actions.
In the legal world, where I spend a good part of my time, only words and actions matter. Thoughts and body language don’t.
This focus on words and actions, which has permeated our day-to-day culture, can lead us to deny just how much what we don’t say can affect one another. How often do we have a sense of what someone is thinking even when they don’t say it? We pick up on body language. A mood. A way of being. What we think has ripple effects.
2) Thoughts are a product of the company we keep.
I heard recently that thoughts are a product of the company we keep. This really struck me, and it made me start to think about the company I keep—and what kinds of thoughts I have around them.
In good company, I don’t come away comparing or judging or being mean to myself—those infectious places. Good company makes me think that there’s nothing the matter with me after all. That we’re all flawed and human and okay. That we may feel lonely for a while, but that’s okay too, and we can find each other again.
3) We really aren’t separate.
There’s a familiar Buddhist idea that suffering comes from attachment. This has always felt off to me, because attachment is so human. What good is life without attachments? But I’ve started listening to Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach at David’s recommendation, and within the first chapter a line made me hit pause. Instead of linking suffering with attachment, Branch frames the Buddha’s first noble truth this way: “All suffering or dissatisfaction arises from a mistaken understanding that we are a separate and distinct self. We have forgotten the loving awareness that is our essence and that connects us with all of life.”
What if loneliness comes in part from our idea that our thoughts are our own domain? What if we believed that the swirl inside our heads is not really our own, but part of the world and connected with everyone and everything else? I’m not sure loneliness would like to live in that kind of world. I think it might pack its bags and go.
THISSSS: "What if loneliness comes in part from our idea that our thoughts are our own domain? What if we believed that the swirl inside our heads is not really our own, but part of the world and connected with everyone and everything else? I’m not sure loneliness would like to live in that kind of world. I think it might pack its bags and go."
Beautiful, raw, real, and comforting as always.