Overcoming Loneliness Quotes

We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.

Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.

Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.

Jason knew his life would never be the same again. British intelligence now had an ace up their sleeve, and Jason had to overcome his fears and deal with the secret world he was now a part of. He would have to grow a tough shell around himself. Despite his many friends, his grandparents and love of his father, he was painfully aware he was very much alone in this world. When it came down to it, there was only one person he could really rely on in the world, and he was called Jason Steed.

Betrayal is too kind a word to describe a situation in which a father says he loves his daughter but claims he must teach her about the horrors of the world in order to make her a stronger person; a situation in which he watches or participates in rituals that make her feel like she is going to die. She experiences pain that is so intense that she cannot think; her head spins so fast she can't remember who she is or how she got there. All she knows is pain. All she feels is desperation. She tries to cry out for help, but soon learns that no one will listen. No matter how loud she cries, she can't stop or change what is happening. No matter what she does, the pain will not stop. Her father orders her to be tortured and tells her it is for her own good. He tells her that she needs the discipline, or that she has asked for it by her misbehavior. Betrayal is too simple a word to describe the overwhelming pain, the overwhelming loneliness and isolation this child experiences. As if the abuse during the rituals were not enough, this child experiences similar abuse at home on a daily basis. When she tries to talk about her pain, she is told that she must be crazy. "Nothing bad has happened to you;' her family tells her Each day she begins to feel more and more like she doesn't know what is real. She stops trusting her own feelings because no one else acknowledges them or hears her agony. Soon the pain becomes too great. She learns not to feel at all. This strong, lonely, desperate child learns to give up the senses that make all people feel alive. She begins to feel dead. She wishes she were dead. For her there is no way out. She soon learns there is no hope. As she grows older she gets stronger. She learns to do what she is told with the utmost compliance. She forgets everything she has ever wanted. The pain still lurks, but it's easier to pretend it's not there than to acknowledge the horrors she has buried in the deepest parts of her mind. Her relationships are overwhelmed by the power of her emotions. She reaches out for help, but never seems to find what she is looking for The pain gets worse. The loneliness sets in. When the feelings return, she is overcome with panic, pain, and desperation. She is convinced she is going to die. Yet, when she looks around her she sees nothing that should make her feel so bad. Deep inside she knows something is very, very wrong, but she doesn't remember anything. She thinks, "Maybe I am crazy.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people.

It's the place built out of Man's ceaseless failure to overcome himself. Out of Man's endless war against himself we build our successes as well as our failures. Making it the city of all cities most like Man himself— loneliest creation of all this very old poor earth.

When a man has learned how to remain alone with his suffering, how to overcome his longing to flee, then he has little left to learn.

I knew this for a fact. Little by little, the ache to see him, to hear him would disappear. Little by little I’d forget how his arms felt, how his fingers felt, how his lips felt..the sound of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, all of it. Trace by trace it would slip from my mind, recede into foggy memory. The painful haze that dulled my present would melt into the past. Maybe not all the way, maybe there would be a few scars. Maybe I'd be different, but I’d be me again. Little by little.

....you can overcome sadness, loneliness, even terrible loss. But guilt goes with you the grave.

Every time a man (myself) gives way to vanity, every time he thinks and lives in order to show off, this is a betrayal. Every time, it has always been the great misfortune of wanting to show off which has lessened me in the presence of the truth. We do not need to reveal ourselves to others, but only to those we love. For then we are no longer revealing ourselves in order to seem but in order to give. There is much more strength in a man who reveals himself only when it is necessary. I have suffered from being alone, but because I have been able to keep my secret I have overcome the suffering of loneliness. To go right to the end implies knowing how to keep one’s secret. And, today, there is no greater joy than to live alone and unknown.

...really, what a strange man he is, thought klara, with that aching feeling of loneliness which always overcomes us when someone dear to us surrenders to a daydream in which we have no place.

The only way we can overcome the loneliness within us is together.

Each person walks a journey unique to himself or herself. Live your own journey and run your own race.

During these long periods of solitary contemplation in a setting of such dramatically haunting beauty, I found myself overcome by waves of loneliness.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people. ​— ​Anthony de Mello

Paul Tillich - Loneliness & Solitude: "And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain to pray: and when the evening was come, he was alone" - Matthew 14.23. 'He was there alone.' So are we. Man [humankind] is alone because he/[she] is man [human]. In some way every creature is alone...Loneliness can be conqured only by those who can bear solitude (1973:15 & 20). To overcome 'our' sense of aloness is a life long pursuite - let us not despair in its pursuite!

Our differences are treasures and they’re also tools. They are useful, valid, worthy, and important to share. Recognizing this, not only in ourselves but in the people around us, we begin to rewrite more and more stories of not-mattering. We start to change the paradigms around who belongs, creating more space for more people. Step by step by step, we can lessen the loneliness of not-belonging.

You cannot truly love yourself if you are constantly surrounded by clutter, chaos and bitterness. The time has come for you to de-clutter your mind and your environment.

When nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want, what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?

That aching feeling of loneliness which always overcomes us when someone dear to us surrenders to a daydream in which we have no place.

Bad habits are demons that often push us into isolation because they know that in our loneliness they stand little chance of being overcome.

Ivanov: No, my clever young thing, it's not a question of romance. I say as before God that I will endure everything - depression and mental illness and ruin and the loss of my wife and premature old age and loneliness - but I cannot tolerate, cannot endure being ridiculous in my own eyes. I'm dying of shame at the thought that I, a healthy, strong man, have turned into some sort of Hamlet or Manfred, some sort of 'superfluous man'... devil knows precisely what! There are pitiful people who are flattered by being called Hamlet or superfluous men, but for me it's a disgrace! It stirs up my pride, I'm overcome by shame and I suffer...

I have suffered from being alone, but because I have been able to keep my secret I have overcome the suffering of loneliness. To go right to the end implies knowing how to keep one's secret. And, today, there is no greater joy than to live alone and unknown. My deepest joy is to write. To accept the world and to accept pleasure—but only when I am stripped bare of everything. I should not be worthy to love the bare and empty beaches if I could not remain naked in the presence of myself. For the first time I can understand the meaning of the word happiness without any ambiguity. It is a little different from what men normally mean when they say: 'i am happy.

I don't think you will ever be able to understand what it is like - the utter loneliness, the feeling of desperation - to be abandoned in a deep well in the middle of the desert at the edge of the world, overcome by intense pain in total darkness. I went so far as to regret that the Mongolian noncom had not simply shot me and got it over with. If I had been killed that way, at least they would have been aware of my death. If I died here, however, it would be truly a lonely death, a death of no concern to anyone, a silent death.

Being with your own self initially feels like sitting alone in a movie hall. You get scared and run back to the crowd of thoughts. Once you overcome the fear, everything settles down in life by itself.

It is lonely behind these boundaries. Some people-particularly those whom psychiatrists call schizoid-because of unpleasant, traumatizing experiences in childhood, perceive the world outside of themselves as unredeemably dangerous, hostile, confusing and unnurturing. Such people feel their boundaries to be protecting and comforting and find a sense of safety in their loneliness. But most of us feel our loneliness to be painful and yearn to escape from behind the walls of our individual identities to a condition in which we can be more unified with the world outside of ourselves. The experience of falling in love allows us this escapetemporarily. The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us as ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness is no more! In some respects (but certainly not in all) the act of falling in love is an act of regression. The experience of merging with the loved one has in it echoes from the time when we were merged with our mothers in infancy. Along with the merging we also reexperience the sense of omnipotence which we had to give up in our journey out of childhood. All things seem possible! United with our beloved we feel we can conquer all obstacles. We believe that the strength of our love will cause the forces of opposition to bow down in submission and melt away into the darkness. All problems will be overcome. The future will be all light. The unreality of these feelings when we have fallen in love is essentially the same as the unreality of the two-year-old who feels itself to be king of the family and the world with power unlimited. Just as reality intrudes upon the two-year-old's fantasy of omnipotence so does reality intrude upon the fantastic unity of the couple who have fallen in love. Sooner or later, in response to the problems of daily living, individual will reasserts itself. He wants to have sex; she doesn't. She wants to go to the movies; he doesn't. He wants to put money in the bank; she wants a dishwasher. She wants to talk about her job; he wants to talk about his. She doesn't like his friends; he doesn't like hers. So both of them, in the privacy of their hearts, begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have his or her own desires, tastes, prejudices and timing different from the other's. One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving.

Be resilient until you complete a task. Challenge yourself and never limit yourself. Stay humble, hopeful, patient, but never quit!

Just when you've overcome the grief, you realise you are left with the loneliness.

depression lowers attention span, tolerance for frustration, and memory. Behavior is affected by lowered motivation, loss of ability to experience pleasure, and fatigue. The body is affected by headaches, stomachaches, and muscle tension. Relationships are affected by a tendency to withdraw and become isolated with loneliness.

Love and respect for self should become a necessity.

Love and acceptance is the greatest gift you can give yourself

To overcome our sense of loneliness is a life long pursuit. Let us not despair in its pursuit!

The challenges of fires and floods can be overcome with courage and wit, but this feeling of loss and loneliness might just prove too great to endure even for this Challenge Girl.

It is everyone’s responsibility to help others overcome hunger, ill health or loneliness.

They reached together a place where fear was gone, where there was only the gentle alliance of souls who had left loneliness behind.

Many survivors of relational and other forms of early life trauma are deeply troubled and often struggle with feelings of anger, grief, alienation, distrust, confusion, low self-esteem, loneliness, shame, and self-loathing. They seem to be prisoners of their emotions, alternating between being flooded by intense emotional and physiological distress related to the trauma or its consequences and being detached and unable to express or feel any emotion at all - alternations that are the signature posttraumatic pattern. These occur alongside or in conjunction with other common reactions and symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem) and their secondary manifestations. Those with complex trauma histories often have diffuse identity issues and feel like outsiders, different from other people, whom they somehow can't seem to get along with, fit in with, or get close to, even when they try. Moreover, they often feel a sense of personal contamination and that no one understands or can help them. Quite frequently and unfortunately, both they and other people (including the professionals they turn to for help) do misunderstand them, devalue their strengths, or view their survival adaptations through a lens of pathology (e.g., seeing them as "demanding", "overdependent and needy", "aggressive", or as having borderline personality). Yet, despite all, many individuals with these histories display a remarkable capacity for resilience, a sense of morality and empathy for others, spirituality, and perseverance that are highly admirable under the circumstances and that create a strong capacity for survival. Three broad categories of survivorship, with much overlap between them, can be discerned: 1. Those who have successfully overcome their past and whose lives are healthy and satisfying. Often, individuals in this group have had reparative experiences within relationships that helped them to cope successfully. 2. Those whose lives are interrupted by recurring posttraumatic reactions (often in response to life events and experiences) that periodically hijack them and their functioning for various periods of time. 3. Those whose lives are impaired on an ongoing basis and who live in a condition of posttraumatic decline, even to the point of death, due to compromised medical and mental health status or as victims of suicide of community violence, including homicide.

Really, what a strange man he is,” thought Klara, with that aching feeling of loneliness which always overcomes us when someone dear to us surrenders to а daydream in which we have no place.

Loneliness is something that finds us all when we think about it and when we're by ourselves when we don't want to be. It creeps up when we desperately feel like we need someone special but can't seem to find anything more than a friend that wishes they could help. Sometimes a friend cannot be found when your willing to settle for one. Sometimes it passes quickly, and sometimes it sticks around to try to drive us to insanity. Its like a creature lying in wait to take us at our weakest moment, but only toying with us when we give up to it. In the end it always passes. There is always something to appreciate and someone to cheer us up. We adapt and overcome. Life is a gift with much more to it than a passing emotion. All around us are beautiful things to console us. Life is much more than one feeling. It is as great as we let it be.

Loneliness is a condition of energetic imbalance. As with all human conditions it is an illusion, albeit a very debilitating one if left unchecked. The key to overcoming any imbalance is to open your awareness to it, and then simply observe it. By observing the imbalance, the anguish of the emotional aspect dissipates allowing a new perspective to emerge, which ultimately has a smoothing effect on the imbalance itself. A focused mind over a short period of time can conquer any energetic imbalance… even loneliness

Man’s development requires his capacity to transcend the narrow prison of his ego, his greed, his selfishness, his separation from his fellow man, and, hence, his basic loneliness. This transcendence is the condition for being open and related to the world, vulnerable, and yet with an experience of identity and integrity; of man’s capacity to enjoy all that is alive, to pour out his faculties into the world around him, to be “interested”; in brief, to be rather than to have and to use are consequences of the step to overcome greed and egomania.

Then you have this other phenomena of the paranormal romance. It's all the benefits of being a vampire without the sacrifices. By the gods, Meyer's vampires walk around sparkling in the daylight and some are vegetarians. But this phenomenon is also tied to a lot of our communal fears. Fear of aging. Fear of fading youth. Fear of loneliness. But whereas the classic motifs are more concerned with confronting and overcoming our fears, the fears of the paranormal romance genre become twisted fantasies of denial. The idea of staying young, attractive and powerful for eternity feeds into the modern self-absorbed ethos.

The A.W.E. Method A.W.E stands for Attention, Wait, Exhale and Expand. Attention means Focusing your full and undivided attention on something you value, appreciate or find amazing. Wait means slowing down or pausing. Exhale and Expand amplifies whatever sensations you are experiencing. A.W.E. is a quick and easy intervention that can cultivate awe in the ordinary, at any time and in any place. Cultivating awe for less than a minute a day reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety, improves social connection, decreases loneliness, reduces burnout, lowers stress, increases wellbeing and reduces chronic pain. The capacity to help heal the mind and body is only one of awe's superpowers.

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right...By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad.

I lay still, enduring the pain. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my cheeks—tears of pain and, even more, tears of despair. I don’t think you will ever be able to understand what it is like—the utter loneliness, the feeling of desperation—to be abandoned in a deep well in the middle of the desert at the edge of the world, overcome with intense pain in total darkness. I

Research has shown that loneliness actually can compound on itself. A lonely brain becomes hyper-tuned to social threats, which can lead us to isolate further. Disconnection from others makes us more susceptible to conspiratorial and superstitious thinking. And this, in turn, can leave us mistrustful of those who are not like us. Which, of course, becomes another way of getting stuck.

I don't want my life to not be the way I expected. I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid. I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgement, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies. I am afraid of me. Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me. I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said 'No, I don't understand.' You're brave because you are here.

A good marketer can sell practically anything to anyone. Tobacco is literally dried, decaying vegetable matter that you light on fire and inhale, breathing horrid-tasting, toxic fumes into your lungs.121 At one point marketers promoted smoking as a status symbol and claimed it had health benefits. Once you give it a try, the addictive nature of the drug kicks in, and the agency’s job becomes much easier. If they can get you hooked, the product will sell itself. Since the product is actually poison, advertisers need to overcome your instinctual aversion. That’s a big hill for alcohol advertisements to climb, which is why the absolute best marketing firms on the globe, firms with psychologists and human behavior specialists on staff, are hired to create the ads. These marketers know that the most effective sale is an emotional sale, one that plays on your deepest fears, your ultimate concerns. Alcohol advertisements sell an end to loneliness, claiming that drinking provides friendship and romance. They appeal to your need for freedom by saying drinking will make you unique, brave, bold, or courageous. They promise fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness. All these messages speak to your conscious and unconscious minds.

When parents are emotionally immature, it is guaranteed that their children will suffer emotional neglect. This deprivation, however, is silent and is an invisible experience for these children, they will feel emptiness but they will not know what name to ascribe to it. They will grow up like this and still not be able to identify or realize that they are suffering from emotional loneliness but they will feel different from those who truly seem at ease.

For many who are alone, because their partner has died or they have separated from them, a sudden, unfamiliar emptiness is the order of the day. This can quickly turn into the thought of supposed uselessness and, not uncommonly, depressive moods. People without partners, whether wanted or unwanted, experience loneliness in a similarly desperate way. They all associate with a basic feeling, which is often called a “belief pattern” in psychology: Something is wrong with me, because…

Anxiety (loneliness or “abandonment anxiety” being its most painful form) overcomes the person to the extent that he loses orientation in the objective world. To lose the world is to lose one's self, and vice versa; self and world are correlates. The function of anxiety is to destroy the self-world relationship, i.e., to disorient the victim in space and time and, so long as this disorientation lasts, the person remains in the state of anxiety. Anxiety overwhelms the person precisely because of the preservation of this disorientation. Now if the person can reorient himself—as happens, one hopes, in psychotherapy—and again relate himself to the world directly, experientially, with his senses alive, he overcomes the anxiety. My slightly anthropomorphic terminology comes out of my work as a therapist and is not out of place here. Though the patient and I are entirely aware of the symbolic nature of this (anxiety doesn’t do anything, just as libido or sex drives don’t), it is often helpful for the patient to see himself as struggling against an “adversary.” For then, instead of waiting forever for the therapy to analyze away the anxiety, he can help in his own treatment by taking practical steps when he experiences anxiety such as stopping and asking just what it was that occurred in reality or in his fantasies that preceded the disorientation which cued off the anxiety. He is not only opening the doors of his closet where the ghosts hide, but he often can also then take steps to reorient himself in his practical life by making new human relationships and finding new work which interests him.

In no time at all after I moved, I was overcome by the enormity of my abandonment, like someone weeping in a crowd. I was astonished by the sudden surge of loneliness and terror I felt when I realized how stranded I was in this hostile place, that I did not know how to speak to people and win them over to me,that the bank, the canteen, the supermarket, the dark streets seemed so intimidating, and that I could not return from where I came – that, as I then thought, I had lost everything. Then Emma came and filled my life. I can’t describe that.

Mary remained weeping for her friend Jesus who had been all the world to her, and whose death ad meant the loss of that world. With great courage to be alone, and great courage to love despite devastating loss, she struggled to carry on, hoping to find and rebury Jesus' missing body. Suddenly Jesus stood before her alive again, calling her name. She turned, reaching, and said "Rabbouni!" "Noli me tangere," he replied- "don't touch me." If the courage to be alone requires also the courage to love, the courage to love still does not overcome loneliness.

Our vaults can leave us lonely, isolated from others, exacerbating the pain of invisibility. And that’s a tough way to go. The amount we hold there, hidden out of sight and guarded by instinctive feelings of fear or shame, can contribute to a larger sense that we don’t belong or don’t matter—that our truth will never comfortably fit with the reality of the world we’re living in. In keeping our vulnerabilities private, we never get the chance to know who else is out there, who else might understand or even be helped by whatever it is we’re holding back.

I hope I have now made it clear why I thought it best, in speaking of the dissonances between fiction and reality in our own time, to concentrate on Sartre. His hesitations, retractations, inconsistencies, all proceed from his consciousness of the problems: how do novelistic differ from existential fictions? How far is it inevitable that a novel give a novel-shaped account of the world? How can one control, and how make profitable, the dissonances between that account and the account given by the mind working independently of the novel? For Sartre it was ultimately, like most or all problems, one of freedom. For Miss Murdoch it is a problem of love, the power by which we apprehend the opacity of persons to the degree that we will not limit them by forcing them into selfish patterns. Both of them are talking, when they speak of freedom and love, about the imagination. The imagination, we recall, is a form-giving power, an esemplastic power; it may require, to use Simone Weil's words, to be preceded by a 'decreative' act, but it is certainly a maker of orders and concords. We apply it to all forces which satisfy the variety of human needs that are met by apparently gratuitous forms. These forms console; if they mitigate our existential anguish it is because we weakly collaborate with them, as we collaborate with language in order to communicate. Whether or no we are predisposed towards acceptance of them, we learn them as we learn a language. On one view they are 'the heroic children whom time breeds / Against the first idea,' but on another they destroy by falsehood the heroic anguish of our present loneliness. If they appear in shapes preposterously false we will reject them; but they change with us, and every act of reading or writing a novel is a tacit acceptance of them. If they ruin our innocence, we have to remember that the innocent eye sees nothing. If they make us guilty, they enable us, in a manner nothing else can duplicate, to submit, as we must, the show of things to the desires of the mind. I shall end by saying a little more about La Nausée, the book I chose because, although it is a novel, it reflects a philosophy it must, in so far as it possesses novel form, belie. Under one aspect it is what Philip Thody calls 'an extensive illustration' of the world's contingency and the absurdity of the human situation. Mr. Thody adds that it is the novelist's task to 'overcome contingency'; so that if the illustration were too extensive the novel would be a bad one. Sartre himself provides a more inclusive formula when he says that 'the final aim of art is to reclaim the world by revealing it as it is, but as if it had its source in human liberty.' This statement does two things. First, it links the fictions of art with those of living and choosing. Secondly, it means that the humanizing of the world's contingency cannot be achieved without a representation of that contingency. This representation must be such that it induces the proper sense of horror at the utter difference, the utter shapelessness, and the utter inhumanity of what must be humanized. And it has to occur simultaneously with the as if, the act of form, of humanization, which assuages the horror. This recognition, that form must not regress into myth, and that contingency must be formalized, makes La Nausée something of a model of the conflicts in the modern theory of the novel. How to do justice to a chaotic, viscously contingent reality, and yet redeem it? How to justify the fictive beginnings, crises, ends; the atavism of character, which we cannot prevent from growing, in Yeats's figure, like ash on a burning stick? The novel will end; a full close may be avoided, but there will be a close: a fake fullstop, an 'exhaustion of aspects,' as Ford calls it, an ironic return to the origin, as in Finnegans Wake and Comment c'est. Perhaps the book will end by saying that it has provided the clues for another, in which contingency will be defeated, ...

Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, not the hen a falcon. The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends ad a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction.

As a young man, the seer became a rake. He drank and fought and made free with the village girls. He became a wagoner, carrying goods and passengers to other villages, an occupation that extended the range of his conquests. A good talker, sure of himself, he tried every girl he met. His method was direct: he grabbed and started undoing buttons. Naturally, he was frequently kicked and scratched and bitten, but the sheer volume of his efforts brought him notable success. He learned that even in the shyest and primmest of girls, the emptiness and loneliness of life in a Siberian village had bred a flickering appetite for romance and adventure. Gregory’s talent was for stimulating those appetites and overcoming all hesitations by direct, good-natured aggression.

The psychoanalyst Otto Rank paired “life anxiety” and “death anxiety.” He called the first that of realizing one’s self as an individual, one who is vulnerable, lonely, separate. The latter is the realization that the only way to overcome our loneliness is to merge with others and lose our precious individuality. We are left afraid of both life and death. In 1973, Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist, built on the ideas of Rank and others in an influential book called The Denial of Death. He believed that the “fear-of-death layer” is innermost in the human psyche, “the layer of our true and basic animal anxieties, the terror that we carry around in our secret heart.” The human, he wrote, “is a worm and food for worms . . . a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.

A Woman’s Only Flaw Author Unknown “When God created Woman, he was working late on the sixth day. An Angel came by and asked, ‘Why spend so much time on her?’ The Lord answered, ‘Have you seen all the specifications I have to meet to shape her?’”  “‘She must function in all kinds of situations.  She must be able to embrace several kids at the same time, have a hug that can heal anything from a bruised knee to a broken heart.  She must do all this with only two hands. She cures herself when sick and can work 18 hours a day.’”   “The Angel was impressed. ‘Just two hands? Impossible!  And this is the standard model?’  The Angel came closer and touched the woman.  ‘But you have made her so soft, Lord.’ ‘She is soft,’ said the Lord, ‘but I have made her strong.  You can’t imagine what she can endure and overcome.’” “‘Can she think?’ the Angel asked. The Lord answered, ‘Not only can she think, she can reason and negotiate.’  The Angel touched her cheeks.  ‘Lord, it seems this creation is leaking!  You have put too many burdens on her.’  ‘She is not leaking.  It is a tear,’ the Lord corrected the Angel.  ‘What’s it for?’ asked the Angel. The Lord said, ‘Tears are her way of expressing her grief, her doubts, her love, her loneliness, her suffering, and her pride.’” “This made a big impression on the Angel.  ‘Lord, you are a genius.  You thought of everything.  A woman is indeed marvelous.’  The Lord said, ‘Indeed she is.  She has strength that amazes a man.  She can handle trouble and carry heavy burdens.  She holds happiness, love, and opinions.  ‘She smiles when she feels like screaming.  She sings when she feels like crying, cries when happy and laughs when afraid.  She fights for what she believes in. ‘Her love is unconditional.  Her heart is broken when a next-of-kin or a friend dies, but she finds strength to get on with life.  “The Angel asked, ‘So she is a perfect being?’ The Lord replied, ‘No. She has just one drawback.’ ‘She often forgets what she is worth.

And you have to realize that you cannot hope to console yourself for your grief by writing. You cannot deceive yourself by hoping for caresses and lullabies from your vocation. In my life there have been interminable, desolate empty Sundays in which I desperately wanted to write something that would console me for my loneliness and boredom, so that I could be calmed and soothed by phrases and words. But I could not write a single line. My vocation has always rejected me, it does not want to know about me. Because this vocation is never a consolation or a way of passing the time. It is not a companion. This vocation is a master who is able to beat us till the blood flows, a master who reviles and condemns us. We must swallow our saliva and our tears and grit our teeth and dry the blood from our wounds and serve him. Serve him when he asks. Then he will help us up on to our feet, fix our feet firmly on the ground; he will help us overcome madness and delirium, fever and despair. But he has to be the one who gives the orders and he always refuses to pay attention to us when we need him.

Viola could start again—there are no second chances, life’s not a rehearsal, blah, blah, blah—yes, but if she could, if she could retake the journey that wasn’t really a journey, what would she do? She would learn how to love. Learning to Love, a painful but ultimately redemptive journey, displaying warmth and compassion as the author learns how to overcome loneliness and despair. The steps she takes to mend her relationship with her children are particularly rewarding. (Half the members of the jury had nodded off by now.) She had tried, she really had. She had worked on herself. Years of therapy and fresh starts, although nothing that really required an effort on her part. She wanted someone else to effect change in her. It seemed a shame you couldn’t just get an injection that would suddenly make everything all right. (“Try heroin,” Bertie said.) She hadn’t turned to the Church yet, but now that she had voted Tory (tactical!), Anglicanism would probably be next. But it didn’t seem to matter how many new beginnings she had, Viola always somehow found herself in the same place, and no matter how hard she tried, the earliest template of herself always seemed to trump later versions.

She hadn’t lived since her childhood either. Why had she not contracted the mark back then and died with her mother? If this was to be the end, it should have come sooner. It might have spared her years of misery and loneliness. And she was so very alone. As she lay staring at the raftered ceiling, she knew more keenly than ever how alone she was. The rest of the staff, tucked safely away inside the inn or the stable loft, slept peacefully oblivious to her midnight turmoil. No one would come looking for her. No one would care when she died. In an instant, her panting breaths twisted into feeble laughter. She was alone, just as she always had been, and fighting against things she had no power to overcome. Everything had changed, but nothing had changed at all. The laughter grew in strength until she gasped, on the verge of hysterics. It didn’t matter whether she was alone or surrounded by scores of friends and loved ones. She would die either way. That naked truth infused her with a blissful, ludicrous peace. Death was the one constant of the deathmark, the one thing she could count on. For Nell, who had lived her whole life trying to protect herself, who had never been able to count on anyone or anything, that realization was most liberating. She would die. But she wasn’t dead yet. The events of her life fluttered through her mind—her distant, naïve childhood, the bleak orphanage, the years at Baker’s Inn. She had wasted time catering to fear. She had been timid, docile, no better than a mule. She had done everything in her power to protect herself from ridicule and punishment, but where had that caution brought her? Sentenced to death, with a million regrets piled on her shoulders. “No more.” She forced those words through her lips, determination etched between her brows. “I will fear no more.” Spoken aloud, the oath seemed binding. Death would come—she had no power to stop it—but until the day it collected her, she would live as she saw fit.

Dear Brave People, I realise that it appears I'm fearless. I can make that presentation with ease, I can stand near the edge of the cliff and look down, and I can befriend that spider in the bathroom. (He's called Steve). But recently I've realised that's not what makes people brave. Brave has a different meaning. I'm afraid of people leaving. After I watched my best friend become someone else's and I was forced into befriending my childhood bully, I realised I don't want to let myself go through this again. I see my fear come through when questioning my boyfriend;s affections. I see it when I distance myself from my friends who are going to leave for university. Isee it in my overanalysis of my parents' relationship and paranoia over a possible divorce. I don't want to be alone. I'm afraid of failure. I aced my exams and the bar has moved up again. I have those high expectations along with everyone else, but I know now that maybe the tower is just too tall, and I should've built stronger foundations. I act like I know what I'm doing, but really I'm drifting away from the shore faster and faster. I don't want to let anyone down. I'm afraid of change. I don't know where I lie anymore. I thought I knew what to do in my future, but I can't bear to think that I'm now not so sure. I thought I was completely straight, but now it's internal agony as I'm not so sure. Turns out I thought a lot of things. I don't want my life to not be the way I expected. I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid. I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgment, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies. I am afraid of me. Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me. I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said "No, I don't understand." You're brave because you're here. I hope you can learn from me and be brave in your own way. I know I am. -B

I hear myself singing – We shall overcome, we shall overcome someday…

Self-examination requires time alone spent in thoughtful study. We naturally fear aloneness, which reluctance can stifle attaining self-knowledge. In her 1942 memoir titled ‘West with the Night,. Beryl Marham spoke eloquently why we must overcome our fear of aloneness and conduct a search for our inner authenticity. “You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would never have bothered to make the alphabet, nor to have fashioned words out of what were only animal sounds, nor to have crossed continents – each man to see what the other looked like.

To act on this fear—a fear of being evaluated then dismissed by others—was to forgo a friendship that actually had some possibilities. In many instances, a preoccupation with appearances—unrealistic social expectations, impossible standards—can be the single largest barrier to a satisfying social life. When I talk about social expectations, I use the term “pecking order” to describe a kind of hierarchy of sociability that exists in the minds of the people who suffer social difficulties. Generally, people who are well adjusted aren’t giving much thought to that guy whose friend is wearing a hearing aid, or how that guy could date that unattractive woman. But people who fear judgment are inevitably far harsher judges of themselves than any outsider could ever be. And yet, at the same time, they deny that there is a problem in need of attention. In fact, denial can be the largest stumbling block in overcoming social anxiety. I see denial at every level. Those in deep denial make statements such as “I don’t want a social life.” Those whose denial is less ingrained make excuses such as “Sure, I’d like to socialize, but I’m too busy with work” or they say offhandedly, “I really prefer to spend time by myself.” But these comments may not tell the whole story. To deny the reality of the social situation is to ensure that the problem will go unaddressed. Denying that loneliness exists allows loneliness to remain. Denying that social anxiety exists can only mean that the anxiety will continue to control your life.

Having no travelling companion brings back all the feelings of loneliness that I’ve fought so hard to overcome. Being on my own, away from the safety of my home, makes my loneliness levels soar.

·      I am alone. ·      I was abandoned. ·      I do not have/cannot make any friends. ·      I do not have any family. ·      I do not have any hobbies or passions. ·      I am different to other “normal” people, for example, not as social, not as happy, not as brave, etc.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the reference manual used by mental health professionals to diagnose psychological problems, defines the avoidant personality disorder by saying that this personality type has the “essential feature of hypersensitivity to potential rejection, humiliation, or shame. . . .” Avoidant people are always afraid of “messing up,” “saying or doing the wrong thing,” “getting caught,” “not being good enough,” and so on. They do anything to save face—even, and this is the extreme, not showing their faces at all. The Manual goes on to describe “an unwillingness to enter into relationships unless given unusually strong guarantees of uncritical acceptance. . . .” Most avoidant people do whatever they can to keep relationships superficial or nonexistent, unless they are sure that the person will accept them without judging them; often, they turn to relatives for emotional support, perceiving them as “safe.” Even if superficial friendships do exist, it is unlikely that an avoidant person will take the perceived risk of sharing intimate thoughts or feelings, for fear that the acquaintance would find “the truth” horrifying or even merely unattractive or unacceptable. “Social withdrawal in spite of desire for affection and acceptance. . . .” Avoidant people may look and act like “loners,” but they’re not. Many of the people I have worked with in my social therapy program start out saying that they are perfectly fine without friends, even though they have sought out treatment for depression or anxiety. The truth is, most people truly want companionship, even if they can’t verbalize the desire. Avoidant people are no exception; the only thing that makes them different is that the fear of rejection we all feel to one degree or another has become so great in their minds that they have trouble controlling it. With effort, though, avoidant people can learn to overcome their fear of rejection and seek out the friendship and even romance that they secretly want. “Low self-esteem.” As I’ve explained, most people who fear rejection act as though they have some terrible secret that would mean instant loneliness if it were discovered. Usually, we are much harder on ourselves than others would ever be. For people whose low self-esteem is a stopper, it seems as though the whole world sees them the way they do, and that only magnifies their poor self-image. “Individuals with this disorder are exquisitely sensitive to rejection, humiliation, or shame. Most people are somewhat concerned about how others assess them, but these individuals are devastated by the slightest hint of disapproval.” So sensitive to disapproval, in fact, that they will avoid it at all costs—even if it means forgoing job opportunities, social events, or intimate relationships that they would truly like to pursue.

Acceptance of yourself as a valuable person is the primary purpose of this therapy.

The key aspect to remember is that only you can truly resolve your loneliness. Change can only come from within.

My favourite letter, of all the ones I have received. "Hello. I cried in a museum in front of a Gaugin painting - because somehow he had managed to paint a transparent pink dress. I could almost see the dress wafting in the hot breeze. I cried at the Louvre in front of Victory. She had no arms, but she was so tall. I cried (so hard I had to leave) at a little concern where a young man played solo cello Bach suites. It was in a weird little Methodist church and there were only about fifteen of us in the audience, the cellist alone on the stage. It was midday. I cried because (I guess) I was overcome with love. It was impossible for me to shake the sensation (mental, physical) that J.S. Bach was in the room with me, and I loved him. These three instances (and the others I am now recollecting) I think have something to do with loneliness… a kind of craving for the company of beauty. Others, I suppose, might say God. But this feels too simple a response. Robin Parks

We’d built something special here around Liza and her loneliness. Around me and my mistakes. This wasn’t the end. Mistakes were meant to be learned from, overcome. They weren’t meant to destroy.

The whole area was crowded with media-generated representations, holographic advertising inducing consumers to imagine that synthetic drugs would bring them good health, that cellular phones would break down the walls of isolation, and that vacations would restore the land and the ocean to them. They wanted consumers to console themselves with the idea that this paltry forgery, this fraudulent, counterfeit luxury surrounding them was really theirs to wallow in, that it existed, that it was real, atmospherically. In whatever direction I looked, the city appeared more and more deserted, the surroundings more desolate, and I was overcome by an unbearable sense of loneliness.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people.—ANTHONY DE MELLO

After I had finished giving the account of my shame, he spoke, impatiently. ''Listen,' he said, piercing me with his cold, blue gaze. 'You must deal with this. You must get those guys, one by one, and crush them. Especially that guy!' My father named the main protagonist, and continued. ''Not yet; you must wait a couple of days. You must catch him by surprise. A good beating from you is what he needs, and I can assure you – he will never think of crossing you again! You see, if you don't do this now, others will come and push you around. You must show them you're not a doormat!'' My father's whole being was charged with some unseen energy, a power which, since I never felt any real closeness to him, seemed frightening to me. I knew he loved me; I knew he would kill for me – I was sure that he would die for me if he had to; yet, since our relationship was deprived of tenderness, there was no sense of warmth to bridge the gap between my gentle, undeveloped heart and his manly strength. I did not feel protected that night, and I did not feel understood. My heart strained under the weight of the utter loneliness which rushed in, adding to the effect of the assault that had taken place earlier. I did not know it at the time, but I do now: it was not an exhortation that I needed, no call to battle. I hungered for understanding and compassion; I yearned for manly warmth, to be held and loved by the one who was stronger than me – the one who would make all things right in the end, regardless of what I did or didn’t do. Instead, I felt helpless and alone. It is difficult, indeed impossible, to develop a fighter's heart and be a warrior who fights to defend himself and others, unless one has first been so nurtured with masculine love and so immersed in it as a boy, that his confidence and strength he is called to display later in life are not false, but genuine, deep and natural, flowing from within. A boy cannot do that by himself; he first needs to belong in the world of men... And it was that which I doubted – my ability to qualify for belonging in that world; the world of my father. This was the only world I ever desired to enter, and now, finally, just as I had feared it would happen, the gate to that world was shut in my face. Not being good enough to gain the right to enter, I lost the opportunity to possess all that could have been granted to me there: an identity, self-worth, and manly courage.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people. ​— ​ANTHONY DE MELLO Once you realize you don’t actually need anyone, you can start enjoying people’s company.

The working model of self is your sense of how worthy or unworthy you feel of being loved. As you might imagine, when you feel unworthy of love, you also fear being rejected and struggle with attachment-related anxiety. You might recognize this as anxiety—a feeling of tension or nervousness. But you could also feel it as other distressing emotions, such as sadness, loneliness, or anger. Adults and children with a strong sense of unworthiness live as though their attachment system, or homing device for an attachment figure, is stuck in the fully “on” position. If you identify with this, you may be constantly in search of reassurance from an attachment figure and chronically feel alone, rejected, or in fear of rejection. And even at the less extreme levels of attachment-related anxiety, people can struggle with feeling somewhat inadequate, and fear being unable to emotionally handle rejection. This book is designed to help you overcome such distress, whatever your level of attachment-related anxiety.

A low vagal tone meant inflammation, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and heart attacks.

The challenges of fires and floods can be overcome with courage and wit, but this feeling of loss and loneliness might just prove too great to endure

she was determined to overcome her loneliness. She allowed no one else to know of the inner struggle, and she fought the battle alone, realizing that no one could help her. The

Even though you will go through all the pain, sadness and hurt, one day you will emerge happier, stronger, confident and victorious.

78.3 Affability. Optimism and cheerfulness. Another virtue which makes social life more pleasant is affability. It may express itself in the form of a friendly greeting, a small compliment, a cordial gesture of encouragement. This virtue leads us to overcome our inclination to irritability, rash judgments and actions ... , basically, to live as though other people didn’t matter. Elizabeth’s start of joy at the Visitation emphasizes the gift that can be contained in a mere greeting, when it comes from a heart full of God. How often can the darkness of loneliness, oppressing a soul, be dispelled by the shining ray of a smile and a kind word! A good word is soon said; yet sometimes we find it difficult to utter. We are restrained by fatigue, we are distracted by worries, we are checked by a feeling of coldness or selfish indifference. Thus it happens that we may pass by persons, although we know them, without looking at their faces and without realizing how often they are suffering from that subtle, wearing sorrow which comes from feeling ignored. A cordial word, an affectionate gesture would be enough, and something would at once awaken in them: a sign of attention and courtesy can be a breath of fresh air in the stuffiness of an existence oppressed by sadness and dejection. Mary’s greeting filled with joy the heart of her elderly cousin Elizabeth (cf Luke 1:44).[496] This is how we can lighten the load of the people around us. Another aspect of affability lies in the practice of kindness, in understanding towards the defects and mistakes of other people (we don’t have to be constantly correcting others), in good manners evinced by our words and behaviour, in sympathy, cordiality and words of praise at an opportune moment ... The spirit of sweetness is truly the spirit of God ... It makes the truth understandable and acceptable. We have to be intransigent towards every form of evil; nevertheless, we have to deal kindly with our neighbour.[497] A truck-driver once pulled over at a highway rest stop for a cup of coffee. He needed a break because he had many miles ahead of him. He sat at the counter and a young boy came to wait on him. The truck-driver asked with a smile, Busy day? The young fellow looked up and smiled back. Some months later, the truck-driver returned to the same stop. Much to his surprise, the young fellow remembered him as if they were old friends. The truth is that people have a great thirst for smiles. They have an enormous longing for cheerfulness and encouragement. Every day we encounter a good number of people who await that momentary gift of our joy. Through the practice of the social virtues we can open up many doors. We cannot allow ourselves to be cut off from any of our neighbours or colleagues. The Lord wants us to do an effective apostolate of friendship and confidence. We need to introduce other people to that greatest of all gifts which is friendship with Jesus.  

Loneliness, anger, frustration, stress, peer-pressure, passions, the desire to please both man and God are all factors in your behavior, and the more you know about what makes you tick, the more you will be in control of your life.

As God, Christ, the virgin, the prince of the apostles and the shepherds labored even so must we labor in our callings. God had no hands and feet of his own. He must continue his labors through human instruments. The lonelier the task the better. The milkmaid and the carter of manure are doing a work more pleasing to God to psalm singing of the Carthusian. Luther never tired of defending those callings which for one reason or another were disparaged. The mother was considered lower than the virgin. Luther replied that the mother exhibits the pattern of the love of God, which overcomes sins just as her love overcomes dirty diapers

Earlier, when I made my coffee (after releasing my grateful geese), I sat at the big Northridge desk and got out the Edward Curtis portfolio for breakfast reading. When I untied the first folio there was a note—“Dalva & Ruth. Wash your hands. I love you. Grandpa.” A simple old note, brittle with age, but I was momentarily overcome with loneliness for her; at the same time, though, I knew in a deeper sense that I was totally out of the running. In the long and short of it, love is a more difficult subject than sex. Or history. I

I believe you write the book you want to read. As a reader what I craved was some recognition, however refracted, of the tumult of lived experience, of the pain and absurdity of trying to reach other human beings with some modicum of honesty and openness. And so without quite realizing what I was doing, over the course of the next few years, I wrote a series of stories that eventually became my first book, each of which dramatized in one way or another this struggle: how to find intimacy in a culture that has hollowed out the very language we use to describe it. How to capture the experience of grief when our terms for it have been overrun by the commercialization of confession. The enemy wasn’t New Criticism. It was cliché. I was trying to write prose whose rhythm created an atmosphere, a music, that allowed the nuances of human isolation, the desire to overcome it, and what it felt like to fail or sometimes briefly succeed in defying that isolation rise into the consciousness of a reader. What I believed then, and still do, is that in a violent, distracted, media-saturated world the most needed artistic resource is no longer a critique of the possibility of meaning—mass culture itself has become that critique. What is needed, rather, is the production of meaning that resists distraction. Consumer capitalism thrives by simultaneously creating human loneliness and commodifying a thousand cures for it. One form of resistance to it is the experience in art and life of a human intimacy achieved through sustained attention to what lies beyond and outside the sphere of the market.

Acknowledge your loneliness, but remember that this can happen to anyone. You cannot prevent stressors from coming in because it is from everywhere and can be anything, but you must be alert to identify it.

Step #10 - Make yourself happy No one can make you happy but yourself. Don’t think that your happiness is dependent on other people. Happiness is a state of the mind and doesn’t depend on how rich, how successful or how intelligent you are. It’s a choice that you have to make consciously. Do it for yourself and not for anyone else. This time, you should not expect anything from other people, so that you won’t get disappointed in the end.

The richness and authenticity of a person’s laugh parallels the availability of his tears. The thrill of an act of courage is measured in the degree of fear it overcomes. The enrichment of love relates directly to its contrast with loneliness. The depth of forgiveness depends on the felt intensity of blame.

The richness and authenticity of a person’s laugh parallels the availability of his tears. The thrill of an act of courage is measured in the degree of fear it overcomes. The enrichment of love relates directly to its contrast with loneliness. The depth of forgiveness depends on the felt intensity of blame.

The key to overcoming this schema can be summed up in a single word: acceptance. You must radically accept that you are human. That means you are going to be awkward sometimes. That’s okay. Real life isn’t a science fiction movie, and there is no such thing as a social robot with flawless communication skills. Let yourself be a human being, foibles and all.

As a child, Les was often weighed down with responsibilities that rightfully belonged to his parents. Because he was forced to grow up too fast and too soon, Les was robbed of his childhood. While his friends were out playing ball, Les was home performing his parents’ duties. To keep the family together, Les had to become a miniature adult. He had little opportunity to be playful or carefree. Since his own needs were virtually ignored, he learned to cope with loneliness and emotional deprivation by denying that he even had needs. He was there to take care of others. He didn’t matter.

We cannot escape the Lord’s words to us, and they will serve as the criteria upon which we will be judged: whether we have fed the hungry and given drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger and clothed the naked, or spent time with the sick and those in prison (cf. Mt 25:31–45). Moreover, we will be asked if we have helped others to escape the doubt that causes them to fall into despair and which is often a source of loneliness; if we have helped to overcome the ignorance in which millions of people live, especially children deprived of the necessary means to free them from the bonds of poverty; if we have been close to the lonely and afflicted; if we have forgiven those who have offended us and have rejected all forms of anger and hate that lead to violence; if we have had the kind of patience God shows, who is so patient with us; and if we have commended our brothers and sisters to the Lord in prayer. In each of these “little ones,” Christ himself is present. His flesh becomes visible in the flesh of the tortured, the crushed, the scourged, the malnourished, and the exiled…to be acknowledged, touched, and cared for by us. Let us not forget the words of Saint John of the Cross: “as we prepare to leave this life, we will be judged on the basis of love”.12

Come to think of it, there's always some savage element at the beach, either to tolerate or to overcome: an element we crave and cower from at the same time. I've always felt in someone's shadow, even though I don't have to compare myself to brothers who are smarter, or to sisters who are prettier. There's no escape from the shadows that mount, inexorably, in this darkening season. Nor can we escape the shadows our families cast. That said, there are times I miss the pleasant shade a companion might provide.

Love often stems from a need to overcome loneliness.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality, by understanding that we don’t need people. ​

When we are impatient, when we want to give up our loneliness and try to overcome the separation and incom­pleteness we feel, we easily relate to our human world with devastating expectations. We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated, intuitive knowledge-that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune, or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition.

When you look around and can’t find any version of yourself out there in the wider world, when you scan the horizon and see nobody like you, you start to feel a broader loneliness, a sense of being mismatched to your own hopes, your own plans, your own strengths. You begin to wonder