” Don’t be a Stranger”

It can be part of the farewell routine, “Now, don’t be a stranger”. It could be a well-meant invitation to a relationship that might be familial or the beginning of friendship. Or maybe it’s touching into a loneliness we’d rather keep hidden.  

Somewhere inside us we each carry a scrapbook of relationships- memories of people and things we cherish, like holding your dad’s hand or the comfort of your grandmother’s knee, a wedding ring that encircles half a lifetime of togetherness, or maybe a stuffed toy that has seen better days. I’ve heard them referred to as memory-anchors, like the feeling that says “ I’m home” that is triggered by memories that have opened and closed a lot of doors.

Relationships scroll through our days, all are expressed in different ways at different times and all of them are a work in progress. At some stage of adulthood you begin to realize that there will always be some area of life where you feel alone, alienated, where differences can seem irreconcilable times when you feel disconnected, when the things and people that  tie you to your inner relationships feel as though they have been severed, and you are alone.

Canadian theologian and writer Ron Rolheiser says you experience loneliness “ in rejection, betrayal, abuse, powerlessness and the feelings you have when you doubt your own attractiveness, intelligence, goodness, strength and emotional stability. “ 

Jesus felt this loneliness the night before he died. He prayed – yes, but he also reached out to his closest friends. He wanted their physical presence, maybe even their chatter and mutterings or yawns, He reached out for company he could see and feel. 

There are always words that can’t be spoken, family disputes that can’t be harmonized, areas of belief – religious, political, sexual – that separate family members or long- time friends. You can be separated from family by physical distance or a silence between you and your partner. You can be felt with a feeling that no one understands just who you are, what makes you tick. It’s a lonely place to be – feeling vulnerable, unable to share it, somehow humiliated.

It was Jesus who said “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.” And he was speaking from experience. Human beings are made to belong – through physical touch, through conversation, and through what poet David Whyte calls ‘the mediation of the intellect and the imagination’. As my mobility decreases I find reading not only fills up some lonely spaces in my life, but it also puts me in touch with the writer, their skill and the world that they deliver to me.   

The aloneness that so often comes with aging, can gift us with a renewed appreciation of our personal individuality, reintroducing us to the place in ourselves where we make room to listen to  voices and beliefs other than our own, especially the young people who are changing the world that we believed was ours.

It can give us the courage to reach out to others, not with our wisdom, though sometimes that might be appropriate too, but into the ordinariness of daily life – the checkout cashier, the baby who smiles at us from their stroller, the equally lonely person who always calls just when our favourite show comes on.

Lonely and alone are not the same. We can drown in loneliness, while alone gives us the time and space to sit gently with our lonely places and share what we find there with a God who understands.  

Judith           judith@judithscully.com.au