One afternoon while playing around on the piano, my daughter Kate (7)
walked up to me, head down, shoulders slumped, crying softly.
“I’m having a problem with my
homework.”
Stepping away from the piano, I walked into the kitchen and picked up a
page of her 1st grade homework that read,
“Write a constructed response to
the statement: Friendship is important
because________.” Kate had written
in large, bold pencil down the center of the page:
“I do not have any friends in my
class!”
My heart sank. Kate put her head
in my lap and cried. I’ve had many
conversations with Kate about school friends.
I often ask who she sits with at lunch or who she plays with at
recess. I know the girls she likes and
the boys she thinks are annoying. Sadly,
I know that sometimes at school Kate feels lonely.
In the book Lonely, a Memoir,
author Emily White attempts to bring attention to an experience she believes most people dismiss: loneliness. In her childhood, White spent a lot of time
home alone. Into her twenties, White
suspected she would never marry, never have kids, and always be lonely. A former lawyer and zealously analytical,
White decides to study every aspect of loneliness. She tries to find the answers to questions
like:
Is loneliness an ailment or a flaw?
What’s the difference between loneliness and depression?
How is loneliness cured?
White starts a blog for lonely people, conducts a study, and ultimately
writes a memoir of her experiences and findings.
Someone suffering with chronic loneliness would probably find this book
deeply comforting. For the non-lonely,
it’s a long, difficult read. White takes
you through 263 pages of analysis, studies, and commentary before she hints at
any solutions. I reluctantly stuck with
the book to the end mainly because the topic of loneliness seemed relevant to
my study of friendship.
This book made me reflect on times in my life where I’ve felt
lonely. I can easily recall the houses,
apartments, and bedrooms where I sat alone, the various model cars I drove
around a new town alone, and the anxiety of attending social functions
alone. It was hard. While the obvious solution seems to reach out
to other people, White points out, when you feel down, empty, and isolated,
motivation is difficult.
The author defines much of what I have experienced as “situational”
loneliness. In situational loneliness,
circumstances such as moving, the death of a loved one, or a health crisis have
caused a temporary state of isolation.
However, some people, like Emily White, experience “trait
loneliness.” They just always feel left
out. They are not socially backward,
unreasonably unattractive, or intentionally anti- social. In trait loneliness, people feel like their
social relationships lack real closeness.
White tries psychotherapy, prescription drugs, herbal remedies, and self-hypnosis. She takes art classes, volunteers at a soup
kitchen, and spends a week cycling with a group of young, educated,
professional women like herself. For
White, none of the remedies proved to be a cure. Some even made the loneliness worse. White believes that forcing a lonely person
into social situations and “getting out there” is not the cure to loneliness.
I disagree.
While I sympathize with White’s analytical method of coping, I found
myself wondering,
“Is her loneliness really just an
unhealthy preoccupation with herself?”
Marinating for years in the “why is this happening to me” phase of a
challenge is an uncomfortable place to be. I know. I've been there. However, I’m not sure if it’s a wise course of existence to wake up every morning,
look in the mirror, and ask,
“Am I happy?”
It’s a reasonable human question, but for me, infinite introspection is
a certain course to misery. Focusing
your energy on other people is a valuable principle of life I call the “Blessing of Distraction.” When you are busy getting to know other
people, inviting them into your life, and actively seeking to relieve the
burdens of others, by default, you become distracted from your own problems.
Despite her opinions to the contrary, after four years of painful,
emotional struggles, White reluctantly joins a basketball team, makes some
friends, falls in love, and slowly emerges from her loneliness.
A few wildly gregarious exceptions aside, I think most people have to
work at friendship if they want it. That’s
what I explained to Kate. Sometimes, you
have to test people out to see if you’re a match. In the end, working at friendship, the
successes, rejections, quarrels, mishaps, foot-in-mouth episodes, is completely
worth it. This world is full of some absolutely
amazing people and sometimes it takes a little work to find them.
I asked my husband,
“If one of your friends told you
he was lonely, what would you say?”
My kind, good-hearted man replied,
“I would say, ‘How can I help?’”
That’s the cure to loneliness.
