The Forever Decision by Paul Quinnett   Chapter 7

LONELINESS

It would help me a great deal to know how old you are. Because if I knew how old you were, I would know better how to talk to you about what you may be going through. But since I can't know this, as best I can, I am going to talk to you as if you were any age.

At this rewriting of this book in an electronic format, I am 62 years old, so odds are I am older than you. Having lived this long, I know a few things about what it is like to be a boy, a teenager, a college student, a soldier, a young married man, a father, a grandfather and, just now, a man with less life ahead of him than behind him. Perhaps unlike you, I have spent thousands of days alone. I did this mostly by choice. In the fall of my life now, I may know a few things about being alone you don’t. Since I am closer to seventy than twenty, perhaps you will give me some small credit for an old man’s perspective.

Frankly, I cannot remember exactly what it was like to be much younger than I am today. But I do remember that when I was young, I was dumb, inexperienced and impulsive, and not nearly as smart as I thought I was. This is not an apology for how I once was, but rather an honest statement about my life as seen in the rearview mirror of reflection. Truth be known, I’m glad I made it this far.

If you are much younger than I, you might be thinking, "What can this old man say to me about loneliness that means anything?"

Or, if you are older than me, you might be thinking, "What can this youngster say to me that I don't already know?"

Since I am not a woman and if you are female, you can ask, "How can a man know what loneliness is like for me?"

To all of the above questions, I have a simple answer: I can't know your loneliness, I won't pretend to.

But because I came into this world alone, like you, and will leave it alone, like you, and because I know that all of us have had the experience of loneliness, then I think I can share with you something of what I know of loneliness. Loneliness is, when you stop to think about it, the one universal human experience. It is the one necessary condition we all share and, out of it, maybe we can come to better understand each other.

All of us are trapped by our vital statistics. We are trapped in our age, our generation, our race, and our sex. Like it or not, we are all prisoners of our own special time and place and accidents of birth. Insofar as we are all captives of who we are, by necessity we are all limited and, in being so, are entirely alone in what we know of life. Our vision is limited, our understanding of others imperfect. In this way we are all blind and must stumble along never knowing just what life is like for another person. There can be no other way.

I can never know what it is like to be poor and black. I can never know what it is like to be raised on a reservation or called names because of the color of my skin. I can never know what it is like to be born rich and live in luxury. But although I can never know these things, it does not mean that I cannot try to understand them. Because I can never experience what another human being experiences, it does not mean that I cannot appreciate him or her or come to feel the same way about the problems of life.

So, I would ask you this: Is there anyone anywhere who has experienced exactly what you have experienced? Is there anyone anywhere who can truly know your pain as only you know it?

I think your answer has to be no. Because that is the way it is with us humans. We know ourselves best, those close to us fairly well, and strangers not at all. But in spite of these limitations, most of us do what we can to understand one another and, so far as we are able, try to make ourselves understood.

This is why we should talk about loneliness. It is, in a way, the common bond between us. Each of us has thoughts and feelings we have kept to ourselves our whole life long. Each of us has private hopes and fears and dreams that, should even the people closest to us ask about them, we would deny. So let us talk about loneliness.

Loneliness can be a killer. In its worst form, it is our enemy number one. You have known it, I have known it, everyone who ever stops to think about the meaning of one's life has known it. It is that terrible feeling that, in all the universe, there is no one who cares enough to come to us and end our aloneness. It is the one thing that hurts more than any other. It is the feeling that no one wants us, that no one really cares if we exist.

I won't kid you, loneliness is the one sure place from which thoughts of suicide can spring. It is out of loneliness that people begin to think that death may be better than life. "I couldn't be any more alone if I was dead, so why not die?" This is the terrible logic of suicide and it is born and bred in loneliness.

When you are lonely, you can look around you and see, however good or poor your vision, that others do not appear lonely. And it is this difference in what you see others have that you don't have, that makes loneliness so awful.

Since I cannot know the depth of your aloneness, I may not be able to say anything that will take the sting out of whatever loneliness you may feel. But since I know that loneliness is such a terrible state, maybe it will help if I talk to you about what I believe loneliness to be and what I think you might be able to do about it.

Being Alone Versus Loneliness
In the first place, I believe there is some confusion about loneliness. To be alone is not necessarily to be lonely. You can be all alone on a mountaintop and yet not be lonely. You can live in a crowded city and be surrounded by thousands of people and yet be dying of loneliness. Or you can be a member of a family and be with people all day and night and yet, in your heart, be lonely. It is, therefore, not a matter of where you are, but how you are connected to the people around you, how you speak with them, how they hear you and how they know about you that makes the difference between being just alone and being lonely.

Many people I have worked with cannot stand to be alone. They equate being alone with loneliness. They have told me that when they are by themselves, they begin to feel empty and hollow and incomplete, as if being in the presence of others gives them meaning they do not otherwise have. They will do desperate things just for the company of others. "I go to bars every night,' one young woman told me, "because I can't stand to stay home alone."

I asked her, "Are you such bad company for yourself?" The woman stared at me. "I hadn't thought of it that way," she said. "I guess maybe I am."

As we talked more, we learned that she had never thought of herself as very interesting or funny or bright. She held a low opinion of herself and couldn't, really, see why anyone would want to spend time with her, except maybe for sex. In a word, she didn't like herself very much. And so, when she was alone, she was keeping company with someone she didn't care all that much about. And she later laughed with me that it was better to be wanted for sex, than not to be wanted at all.

But as you can see, this was a vicious cycle. She did not like casual sex, but because she needed to be with someone – anyone – to be affirmed that she was not alone, she sacrificed her self-esteem and, into the bargain, only lowered it that much more. Because, as she said, "Only a lowlife would do the things I've done.”

So, at least one reason for loneliness is that we don't like ourselves. I cannot, in any simple way, help you to begin to like yourself. I wish I could. But where I cannot, others can. Or maybe you can help yourself. All I know is that until you begin to like yourself, no great gains can be made against loneliness.

Until you begin to identify and know and accept that you have some value, some purpose, and some good and decent qualities as a human being, you will find being alone a terrible way to spend your days.

For other lonely people, I have often recommended that they spend some time alone. I know that sounds crazy, but consider the case of the disc jockey.

Ted was a busy radio disc jockey and never failed to come on the air in a happy, cheerful voice. He had fans. He was paid well and had a girlfriend. From the outside, his life looked wonderful. But he came to me because, as he put it, "I must be crazy!"

"Why are you crazy?" I asked him.

"Because, despite how I appear to you I am terribly lonely. I can't stand not to have people around me. They're like air to me. If I'm alone for just a few minutes, I begin to panic, as if I can't breathe. My girlfriend and I want to get married, but I feel I'm not ready. It's as if I need her too much. It's as if, if I married her, I would never be able to be without her. And that doesn't seem fair to her."

As I got to know Ted, I realized that he had let himself become a hollow man. Without fans and friends and people around him to tell him how clever and bright and entertaining he was, he felt empty and alone. He had, it turned out, never spent time with himself, by himself, or getting to know and like himself. Somewhere, deep in his mind, I think he thought he needed people too much and that, without them, he believed he might die of loneliness. As goofy as it sounded to him, I suggested he walk from my office to the park across the street and sit for one hour and not talk to anyone, except maybe himself.

The next time we met, he laughed and said he had failed. “Ever try to carry on a conversation with a duck?” Then he added, “That was the longest hour I ever spent. Almost painful. And ducks don't laugh at your jokes.”

But the effect was good. Gradually, by spending more and more time by himself, he began to realize that he could survive without people constantly around him. He could breathe easily, think things to himself, and come to make friends with his inner thoughts and feelings. He began to feel he could make it on his own and needn't fear being alone the way he once had.

Toward the end of our sessions, I asked Ted if he could try something he had never done before, something that would give him the strength to live alone, if that should be required of him one day. The very thought of it frightened him. "What do you suggest?" he asked.

“What do you suggest?” I said.

Ted thought a moment. “I've always wanted to take a wilderness canoe trip. Maybe I could do that.”

"By yourself?"

"Is there another way?"

"I'm afraid not.” I said.

And so Ted rented a canoe and drifted on a wilderness river for three days by himself. When he returned, he was beaming. He had survived aloneness and was not lonely. We ended our sessions and, within a month, Ted was married and off to a new job in another city.

The point of Ted's story is simply this: It is not being alone that is the enemy it is the fear of being alone. And, while I do not want to make this sound too easy, it is my feeling that we all must find a way, not to endure aloneness, but to enjoy it and to grow from it.

Making Our Own Loneliness
From other people I have learned that loneliness is often of one's own making. Somewhere, somehow, we come to a belief that is wrong. We believe that other people somehow owe it to us not to let us suffer loneliness. We believe that, just because we are human beings, others will come to us to inquire after our thoughts and feelings. While this sometimes happens, I do not believe this is a good thing to count on. If anything, people tend to avoid us if we look and act lonely.

Have you ever heard yourself say, “Nobody really cares.” I'm sure I have and I'm pretty sure everyone has at one time or another. It is a statement of loneliness. To say it once or twice because we feel all alone is one thing, but to believe it to be true now and forever is something else again.

In my view, a lasting belief that nobody really cares about us and no one can ever care about us in the future is the equivalent of a self-imposed death sentence. If we truly believe this is how things are today and how they will always be in the future, then what hope can there be that we can beat loneliness?

None.

But let's examine this belief a bit.

Where did we get it? Is it because when we have been lonely, people have not come to us to relieve our loneliness? Have our parents been too busy and our so-called friends too preoccupied with themselves?

Probably. But does that make it true forever? Or are we like little scientists with a pet theory that we are trying to prove? Have we established a hypothesis that says, “People don't care and the proof is that I am lonely and nobody is doing anything about it.”

I think there is a way to test this. Let's assume for the moment that you are not the loneliest person in the world, that out there somewhere is at least one person more lonely than you. I know that is hard to believe, but stay with me.

Now let's suppose that you, being the second loneliest person in the world, decide to try to find the loneliest person in the world. How would you do this?

There is only one way. You would have to go and try to find him or her. And you would do this by reaching out to someone; asking if they had had a nice day, or did they enjoy a movie they had seen or just about any question you might think of. Since you already know you are the second loneliest person in the world, you wouldn't bother telling them this, but rather you would try to find out about them. You would ask about their feelings and thoughts and hopes and fears.

Now, what would happen? The first thing that would happen is that you would quickly slide down to number three or four on the lonely list. And if you talked to enough people, eventually you probably wouldn't even make the list.

I know how simple-minded this sounds. But can you think of another way? I cannot. And I know that if you wait for the world to come to you to end your loneliness, you may have a very long wait indeed.

Lonely people have said to me, "But that's harder to do than you realize. I can't just go up to some stranger and start talking to them."

And I have said, "Why not?"

"Because I don't have anything to say."

"That's fine," I have said. "You don't have to say anything about yourself. In fact, you shouldn't. You already know you're the second loneliest person in the world and haven't got much going anyway. The job is to find out about them, not to tell them about yourself."

I have used this suggestion many times with many people and have never seen it fail. I have found that if lonely people will take just this one small step that, in so doing, they will learn something they didn't know. And that is that everyone is lonely to a degree and that, of all the things we like to do in this world, one of the best is to talk about ourselves. If given any opportunity at all, we can talk and talk and talk about ourselves. It is getting someone to listen that is the trick.

Once someone engages us in a conversation like this, two things generally happen: (1) we begin to like this person who encourages us to talk about ourselves, and (2) we want to know more about them and begin to ask them questions.

Sooner than you can imagine, a friendship is in the offing. And if loneliness is enemy number one, friendship is the FBI.

This is nothing new. Smart people have known for centuries that the quickest way to make friends and never be lonely is to ask about the other person and get him or her to talk about himself or herself. You hold back on what you would like to do (talk about yourself), while you listen and learn about someone else. It is really as simple as that.

So, if you are lonely and willing to try another kind of experiment (as opposed to proving that people don't really care), then you can do something today to test this idea. You can pick out just about anybody -the person sitting next to you on the bus, the girl across the table at the lunchroom, the janitor that waxes the hall, anyone -and make a few simple inquires. "How's it going?"

"It was pretty hot yesterday, wasn't it?" Or whatever it takes to get a conversation going. Then, make it a point to learn just two things about this person: where he is from, and what he does for a living or is studying in school. All conversations between strangers begin this way. On the basis of just two bits of information (where you are from and what you do), people can begin to feel if there is a common bond possible between them. They can begin to feel the possibility of a friendship.

The problem of getting someone to listen to us, to break into our own loneliness, will solve itself because, lo and behold, the people we have sought out will soon want to know about us. They simply can't help themselves unless, of course, they are so stuck on themselves they don't care about anyone else - in which case they probably weren't worth knowing anyway.

The key to get the ball rolling is not to talk about ourselves until asked a question and, then, to keep our answers short. Later, when we have a relationship, we can talk about ourselves much more freely. This is essentially what psychologists and psychiatrists and counselors like me do all the time – it is why people generally come to like us. Everyone likes a good listener, or so it seems.

Of course some people may look at you as if you're nuts when you start such a conversation, but that is their problem. In my experience and in the experience of the lonely people I have worked with, the fear of being rejected is only that - a fear. And if we live within the confines of our fears, then we will remain a prisoner of our loneliness and nothing will ever change.

So I think you have to ask yourself this question: Have I had any hand in my own loneliness? Have I been like the little scientist who sets out to prove that people don't really care? Have I been collecting evidence that in spite of the fact that there are billions people on the planet, not one of them could ever be my friend?

Because if you have, then you have also been building a case for choosing death over life. And, until you (and I mean only you) take the first step out and away from loneliness, things will probably not change for the better.

I might take a guess as to what you're thinking right now. "Yeah, and if I try it, I'll get hurt again. I'll reach out to someone and they won't like me. It won't work."

And you might be absolutely right. It might not work. People might hurt you again. And you would have even more proof that people don't really care and that you can't ever get out of the cup.

But I ask you, where does it say on your birth certificate that you have any guarantee against loneliness or that if you risk knowing and maybe loving someone that you will always come out a winner?

Nowhere, that's where.

I'm sorry, friend, but none of us gets guarantees that life won't be painful or that we can't get hurt.

So I'll ask you, what alternatives do we have? Can any of us just sit back and wait for someone to come to us and end our loneliness? Or do we have to take that first small step?

Admittedly, it is a gamble. But like it or not, unless we want to cash in our chips and quit the game entirely, it is a gamble we all must take.

Try to remember, out there somewhere among those billions of people is someone, maybe just like you, who is about to take the same gamble. Who knows, among more than five billion souls, there might even be three or four or maybe even a dozen who, at this very moment, are about to take the same gamble as you. If you happen to meet up with each other, you can quarrel later over who was the loneliest.