ALONENESS

“The ever-disquieting realization that we just might be alone is the singly most avoided thought studiously escaped whenever possible. It is the proverbial elephant in the living room. When we hear songs about it, read books about it, see movies that haunt us with that theme, we dash for the door to find some instant  cure like calling someone,  having a drink, taking a pill, partying, working harder, looking for some new physical, emotional or intellectual adventure to push it back in the recesses of the mind. But everyone knows that this is only denial. There is no way to avoid the fact that we are alone in a big universe. It is an aloneness that harder work, more pleasure and scaling accomplishment can never satisfy.

When we are alone, we ponder the personal questions of self-conscious existence: Who am I? Why am I here? What am I? Why do I feel so alone when I am in the midst of people I don’t know and even when I am with people I do know? Why am I doing what I do day after day? Is it all worth it? Why do I defend myself trying to justify that I feel good about myself? Why do I try to measure up hoping others will think I am an OK person? Why do I live where I do, wear the clothes I do, look for friends who make me feel comfortable? Why do I hide my feelings, my dreams and my fears? Why do I constantly have to prove myself? I am an inconsistent person and could be better, but better for what and how and why?

If these are the questions we ask and face them honestly, we are looking at everyone in the world. So much of human activity is predicated on dealing with the aloneness factor. The final frustration of each person’s aloneness can be seen and summed up in the extremely revealing statement of the mountain climber who, when asked why he climbed Mt. Everest, answered, “Because it’s there.” That is the final refusal to face the bottom-line issue of living without God. You just see each moment as a mountain to climb, to keep active, as something to do to keep you occupied, a task to accomplish, just because it is there, because the alternative is to face the great void, the abyss of loneliness and what to do with it.

But then comes the wall of reality that no one ever scaled, aloneness ultimately ends in the darkness of death and beyond. Because when you finish a task, climb a mountain, find the peak of pleasure, get the trophy, find the acceptance, feel good for the moment, they are only as fulfilling as that moment of adulation when you finish them, because then you have to start all over. You are still alone with no permanent sense of fulfillment. And the attempt to keep a record of it all, to live in the nostalgic past of accomplishments is an even lonelier walk when you find other people forget who you are, new people haven’t even heard of you, your self-defenses begin to break down with age. You’ve seen the older person who begins talking to himself because the world around no longer cares. It is taken up with its own hectic escape from aloneness. And there is the dark wilderness of aloneness wanders the heart still East of Eden in the thorns and thistles.

Aloneness is a spiritual void, a deepening darkness that only God in Jesus Christ can fill. This is why the prophets said that a light was coming into the world and Jesus declares He is the Light of the world. He did just that when He came into this world and brought His light to end the frustration of life without God, cancel the temporary fading attempts for acceptance and meaning and bring in the permanency of a real relationship which illumines the heart and its surrounding world.”

(Harald Haugan, The Gospel of John, pp.255-257)