Pulley: What separates being alone from being lonely?

Jul 26, 2023

Why are some people lonely and others not?

Some, through no fault of their own, are forced to live without the creature comforts they once had — loved ones, commodious surroundings, friends to commiserate with, pets no longer available, a restrictive and unrewarding diet, harsh environments unlike earlier conditions. Or the people may not necessary be alone, just missing what once propped them up, provided meaning. Generally, a lonely state.

Yet, some folks can lose their comfortable situations and not be lonely. My mother spent her last several years in a nursing home, away from the town where she grew up, absent from her husband of over fifty years who died when she was still in good health, unable to attend the church which bolstered her well-being and allowed her creative talents to flourish as organist, children and grandchildren living miles away. We visited when we could and found her content, an easy life free from cooking, clothes washing, house cleaning. Once, as I was leaving, I said, "Bye, Mom. Hope some people come to visit."

"Oh, I don't care if no one does. I've got lots to think about." And I implicitly believed her.

Then the time when I was alone with her and a couple of former neighbors came to visit. She acknowledged them graciously and within ten minutes was asleep. After they whispered to me they would leave, she opened her eyes. "I didn't go to sleep. I was just tired listening to them talk." Those years of her being alone, by all accounts, were good years. So, perhaps the rush of a daily and frenetic life can foster unhappiness, resulting in a form of loneliness. One can be lonely in a crowded and busy room.

I suppose a person's worldview might contribute to loneliness. In Cormac McCarthy's recent and last novel, "Stella Maris," a character observed: "It should come as no surprise to find that people in rubber rooms have a worldview at odds with that of people who put them there." I've had some experiences with those in psych units and wonder how many, if any, are lonely. Or if a certain amount of therapy might assuage loneliness. Or if, as McCarthy seems to imply, worldviews change whether one is free or confined.

Still, I suppose loneliness can visit people in many conditions — contented, worried, flooded with wealth, engulfed in poverty, full of religious certainty, espousing hopeless absurdity, happily carefree, depressingly immobile.

Only fools think they should be happy all the time — or in the case of loneliness, surrounded by jovial, uplifting folks. I've known people whose smiles betray inner turmoils, longings for more than they get, the smiles perhaps masking an innate loneliness. Is the eternal optimist nothing more than a Pollyanna refusing to see reality in its sometimes horrid and frightful conditions? The optimist and absurdist might share much in common: a refusal to see life both delightfully and horrifically, often at the same time. A mix one can't avoid.

A character in Cormac McCarthy's next-to-last novel, "The Passenger," says, "Beauty makes promises that beauty can't keep" — beware of life's platitudes that someday might return, as my father once said, "to bite you in the butt." Reality has a way of turning in the most unusual ways, sometimes from calming to chaotic, sometimes from chaotic to calming.

Perhaps loneliness need not be a lasting condition. In Dante's "Inferno" after being through the rings of hell, the traveler at last " ... came forth to re-behold the stars." Often change happens in surprisingly delightful ways, erasing such things as loneliness.

Michael Pulley lives in Springfield. He can be reached at [email protected].