Three ways to stop feeling lonely

Lately I’ve been struggling with bouts of loneliness.

I know this is partly an after-effect of the pandemic — a failure to reintroduce social rituals that were part of my life pre-Covid. It’s also a time of life thing. I work from home; my kids have grown up so I’m no longer chatting it up with other parents at school pickup; and many of my closest friends live far away.

I’ve been taking active steps to try and turn things around, like reaching out to friends more often and saying “yes” to social opportunities when, as an introvert, my instinct is to say “no.” But these lonely moments still happen. And they don’t feel great.

So the other day, as I was reading the Dalai Lama’s book, “The Art of Happiness,” I leaned forward in my chair when the interviewer asked the Dalai Lama, who isn’t married and doesn’t have children, if he ever gets lonely.

He said, “No.” And then went on to explain that this is because he sees everyone he meets (even a perfect stranger) as a friend or loved one. So how can he ever be lonely?

This simple, and yet incredibly complex answer by the Dalai Lama reminded me of an experience I had a number of years ago.

One Sunday morning…

I had just moved to a new town and decided to check out one of the local churches. The service had already begun when I arrived, so I found a seat in the last pew and then immediately regretted coming.

My head just wasn’t in the game. I mouthed the words of the hymn, but was consumed with other thoughts: mainly, what my family would be doing — or not doing — without my careful guidance at home.

Just as I was contemplating a discreet exit, a man appeared next to me, essentially blocking my way. He was an elderly gentleman — a few inches shorter than me with a thin, solemn face; stooped yet dignified, in a New England blue-blood sort of way.

It took him a few minutes to get situated in the pew, to take off his worn camel-colored leather mitts and re-gain his footing. He was unsteady on his feet.

I watched out of the corner of my eye as he struggled to first grasp and then pick up the hymnal from the pew rack. By the time he fumbled through the pages to find the hymn we were singing, we had begun the final refrain.

For a moment I considered helping him, but instead I stood there motionless, eyes trained on the alter. He didn’t look like he wanted help.

But then again, what does that look like? Most of us don’t ask for help when we need it. As I sat there, next to this very reserved-looking man, I wondered: Is it better to respect someone’s sense of “separateness” or to overlook it?

When it came time to read the next prayer, I watched the man’s hand clumsily drift between the hymnal and the prayer book, not sure which was which, and not strong or dexterous enough to pick up either one.

Intuitively I took two big side-steps — we had been standing about four feet apart, and without looking at him held out my prayer book so that he could look on. At first he resisted, continuing to fumble for his own book, and then he gave in and began reading along with me.

At least I think he was reading. I never heard a word, until it came time to recite the Lord’s Prayer, which we both knew by heart.

As we stood there, side by side, repeating this familiar prayer for the 500th or 5,000th time, I thought about how this man could be my grandfather. He could be my father. He could be me. And I could be his granddaughter, his daughter, or his younger self.

Of course, not really. I grew up in a blue-collar community in the South. My grandfather was a self-made rural businessman; my father was a builder. A born-and-raised Southern Baptist, I knew nothing about the man standing next to me in this stately New England church.

But in the end, when it’s just you and me, all of the exterior trappings — the unimportant details — fall away. And we’re left with this shared experience of life.

A lifetime of who knows what. Accomplishments and regrets, celebrations and losses, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows … wonderful moments of togetherness and desperate moments of aloneness.

We all live through them, in our own way, in our own time. None of us are immune to the cycle of life — its beauty and its cruelty.

For the duration of the service, this man and I stood side-by-side, like old friends, as our eyes scanned the songs and prayers on the page. He would whisper a soft, “thank you,” each time I closed the book. And when we stood to take communion, he stepped out so that I could walk first down the aisle.

After the service, I stopped to say a brief hello to a friend as the man disappeared out the side door of the church. I looked for him. At least to get his name. To tell him mine. To make a personal connection.

But he was gone. I wondered if I would ever see him again.

I never did.

Looking back on this experience, I’m reminded that loneliness, for me, is a choice. And there are concrete things I can do to choose connection instead.

I can change my mindset.

The experience that day in the church makes me think of all the people whose paths I cross on a given day. I half sleepwalk through these chance encounters. Always in a rush to get back to familiar faces, to the relationships that I think — I hope — are worth investing in. The ones that are long-lasting.

And yet, the truth is: on any given day, these strangers in my midst outnumber my friends. If I could only pretend — for a few brief moments — that the separateness wasn’t real, that I was connected in a meaningful way to these unfamiliar people, then maybe I’d experience less loneliness, more joy, less angst, more peace.

Ironically, when really horrible things happen to us, it’s seldom those in our inner circle who are on the first line of defense. It’s the person standing next to us at the grocery store. It’s the doctors and nurses at the hospital. It’s the co-worker at the desk catty-cornered to ours. It’s that faceless person on the street.

And it’s sobering to think: how often are we that faceless person? We never know what someone’s going through or at what juncture we enter their life story, if only for a millisecond. We may be the first, the fifth, or the tenth person someone sees after getting that dreaded diagnosis. Or in a moment of quiet hope after learning that the last scan was clear.

We can be faceless characters in one another’s stories, or not. We always have the choice. Of course, it’s so much easier to keep walking, to pretend we don’t see, to make ourselves busy being busy. But by narrowing our scope, we miss something far greater.

I can be present to those around me.

A year or so before the pandemic, I heard Arlo Guthrie in concert. For the second time. At both concerts two different white-haired men, with tears in their eyes, tried to articulate to me what it meant to be part of the ’60s generation — the camaraderie, the idealism, the belief that together they could make a difference.

The music of that time period, and the culture it represented and helped to create, was also about connection, feeling genuine empathy for one another, for the sameness of all people.

Whether this is more or less true of generations today, I can’t say. But as 1,000 or so strangers stood elbow-to-elbow in the concert hall singing along to “My Peace,” written by Woody Guthrie and put to music by his son Arlo, I realized something.

In this complicated and divided world we live in, we desperately need to be reminded of the impact we can make — just by choosing to be present to the person next to us, whoever that may be.

I found this clip of “My Peace” from another concert Arlo gave years ago. It’s a powerful song. Since that night at the concert, I’ve watched it again and again, grappling with the message — so simple and yet so challenging to put to practice on a real-life, day-to-day basis. It brings tears to my eyes every time.

My peace, my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you
My peace is all I ever had, that’s all I ever knew.
I give my peace to green and black and red and white and blue.
My peace, my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you.

My peace, my peace is all I’ve got and all I’ve ever known.
My peace is worth a thousand times more than anything I own.
I pass my peace around and about ‘cross hands of every hue;
I guess my peace is justa ‘bout all I’ve got to give to you.

If we took this message to heart, how different would our lives be? How different would the world be? I know that it wouldn’t have taken me a full five minutes to reach out to the gentleman sitting next to me at church that Sunday morning.

I can look for the common thread.

Are we islands in a sea of strangers, or connected by the invisible thread of humanity?

For the past few days I’ve been busily looking for the thread. On a weekend trip to the big city, I found it during the most routine encounters — with Daryl the front-desk clerk who was putting himself through college, Aseem the parking attendant who loved soccer, and Molly the barista who just became a new mom.

We did a lot of sightseeing in a few days. But what I remember most about our trip are the faces of the four people I dared to connect with.

Although what I’m realizing is that it’s not really about making a connection, it’s about choosing to see the connection that’s already there.

The Dalai Lama was saying just this when he answered the interviewer’s question about loneliness with a simple, “No.” His point was, “How can I be lonely when I’m surrounded by people I share a profound connection with?”

To him, it must be incredulous that we pretend to be so different from one another. That we would ignore our sameness, our shared humanity—in elevators, checkout lines, subway cars, restaurants, and sometimes even churches.

So this is my charge, moving into another day, another week.

To look for the thread.

“Go out into the world today and love the people you meet. Let your presence light new light in the hearts of others.” — Mother Teresa