Written a bunch about loneliness in my day, in part because I often feel it — here’s maybe the first one I did, here’s one on loneliness at work, and here’s one I got screamed at about on Twitter for “being an apologist for white supremacy.” So that was fun.
My pastor is doing a sermon series on loneliness right now. We exchanged a couple of emails about it before he did the first sermon, which was yesterday. It was a good to great sermon, and the sad part is that if you looked around the church, a few Subdivision Sarahs and Sammys were looking at their phones, which is the essence of not being present, which is part of why we have this whole loneliness epidemic, even if people deny it exists. So that was sad.
Then, later in the day I actually felt kinda lonely, and I was going to reach out to this small group I have through that church, but I realized across the other three couples, you had one baptism going on, you had one kid in the hospital with breathing issues, and in the third couple you have them building a nursery for an impending child. So that only increased my own feelings of loneliness, but I’m also not going to reach out to someone in a position where I know they won’t really be able to respond, because that’s going to make me feel worse, and then I’ll probably want to drink, or some shame spiral will be created, and that’s not something I can easily deal with.
I went back for a second to the sermon itself, and one thing my pastor said was … we often constitute “service” as going to a mission, or Habitat, or whatever. We think of it as “Here is some time we are dedicating to those who are less fortunate.” I have never Googled the exact definition of “service,” but I assume it’s something akin to that, no?
What if, instead, we thought of “service” in that way — but also as in, checking in on people, seeing how they are doing, seeing if they are lonely, seeing if they want to connect, seeing what they need from others?
Could that also be a form of “service” we consider? It’s not a soup kitchen, but it might have just as much value in some ways.
A lot of people are lonely, whether or not they admit it. Wouldn’t helping them out check the “service” box for you in a potentially more-tangible way, because you know the person directly?
Just food for thought.
Great post, Ted. Thanks for saying this. It’s often overlooked. No, social doesn’t help. Pick up the phone. See someone. Have a chat with someone standing next to you at the grocery store.