Loneliness is most intense in the presence of others

​I went to our local high school football game Friday night. I take the boys, they scramble off to find friends, and I find my seat in the bleachers where I normally sit.

By myself.

Only Friday, a friend I hadn't seen in a long time came and sat next to me. He said his family was scattered in different directions tonight. Do you mind if I sit with you?

Sometimes being alone feels like a gift to me. But I've also come to recognize, and own, that I've spent much of my life using being alone as a way to ward off loneliness.

I know, I get it, that sounds paradoxical. Maybe it is.

But loneliness is often most intense when surrounded by others. At least that's my history. It's in the presence of others we are often reminded how completely unknown we are. It's where we are most often confused for someone others want to see and not who we truly are.

So we shut down. Or worse, pretend. And in the pretending, we become even a stranger to ourselves.

We become as unknown to ourselves as we have always been to others.

And so we escape. Back to being alone.

I have worked on my own loneliness the last several years. A huge piece of that has been being willing to say, this is who I am, this is my situation. I say it to close friends; many days I come here and say it to the world.

The other thing I've worked on is slowing my life down enough to be curious about the situations other people are living in. To be present.

We are not often still enough for curiosity.

But I've come to recognize it's in knowing the situations of others that we become more in tune with our own situations. It's often in developing compassion for the narratives other people are living out in their lives that we find compassion for our own narrative.

And, our narratives start suffering less loneliness.

There are days being alone still feels like a gift. But today, being alone is more a gift of recharging than it is a place to hide. A recharging that's helped me discover an ever grander gift.

The gift of hearing, do you mind if I sit with you?