While I was on leave in Hong Kong earlier in the year, I had a reunion with many of my high school friends whom I have known for many years. While reminiscing on the past, I felt excited but also a little melancholic because at my life stage, it’s much harder to find new heart-to-heart friends now. This made me feel a bit lonely. Thankfully I picked up a book titled “Loneliness, Solitude and Friendship”.
Reading this book helped me through many self-reflections, and below is some simple sharing from the book. Even though we cannot touch or see loneliness, everybody can sense it. We can feel the cold in the loneliness of the homeless. We can feel the isolation in the nursing home. We can feel the buried loneliness at the bars and parties. We can sense the
torment of loneliness in couples who have been married for many years. At school or at work, the eyes of the ostracized pours out their loneliness.
How can we face loneliness? How can we make it our friend? I will briefly outline two suggestions by the author.
1. Be aware of our emotions. First, we quiet down. Then we listen with gentleness and openness to what our emotions are telling us. Feeling lonely means that we have loved or have been loved. It also shows that we are seeking to belong. Being aware of our own emotions helps us to communicate with others. Our prayers to God can also be more
authentic, and we can pour out our hearts to God like the Psalmist, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? “ (Ps 43:5)
2. Accept our painful experiences. We learn to accept (but not pity) our experiences and hurts. Acceptance is not believing that the hurts are beneficial, but to accept with regret our own story, accept that those who have hurt us have actually done so. When learning to accept our own story, never forget that God is always with us. Practice meditating on God’s love, and nothing can “separate us from the love of God” (Rom 8:35-39).
If you feel lonely, congratulations! Because it is your friend, and can help you to acknowledge your need for God (Ps 42:1-2).