IT'S NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE

June 24, 2007

"It is not good for man to be alone." That is the judgment of God, as recorded in the book of Genesis 2:18. Being alone is bad for physical and emotional health, and for moral development, too.

Being alone can be morally unhealthy by making it easy to be selfish and to think only of oneself. When you're alone, the needs of others, and the moral imperative to meet them, are easily forgotten. "Out of sight, out of mind."

It is of course also unhealthy never to be alone. It can and does happen that a person may seek to avoid his own company by constantly plunging into one activity or relationship after another. Yet, having some time alone is vital to growing in our relationship with God. St. Bernard said, "When I am most alone, then am I least alone." He meant it was easiest to become aware of God's presence when he was not distracted by the presence of others.

We also need time alone just to think, to put things in perspective, and to recover our vision of the "big picture" of what really matters in life. Time alone also allows us to get in touch with our hearts, and to remember and reaffirm our loves.

This kind of aloneness is good. The unhealthy aloneness I’m speaking of is the kind that results from withdrawing from life, or from failing to find or to maintain living relationships of love and friendship with others. This aloneness can become a way of life, one which frees a person from all the frustrations, annoyances, and sufferings of human engagement, but which also condemns one to inner emptiness. Anyone who builds walls around himself to keep others out may not realize it, but he's constructing a prison cell for himself at the same time!

What’s our social situation? We’ve become a society of free, autonomous individuals, and in the process, we've become a lonely crowd. We're often crowded next to one another, but we're not always with one another.

How has this happened? To a great extent, the society we have evolved is the result of technological advances which have transformed the workplace and neighborhood. Mobility and relocating have made us rootless and disconnected. People change jobs and residences again and again. To some extent our situation is the result of a political philosophy which extols and champions the rights and freedoms of the individual. All of these advances have been noble. It's just that the law of unintended consequences has set in, and we now have an unhappy situation no one envisioned, planned, or desired.

It must also be said, though, that our solitary lifestyles are often a matter of choice. How many divorces have happened because either or both parties decided they preferred to be alone?

Our culture encourages us to try to eliminate stress completely from our lives, as though that were possible. We have learned to say, "I don't need this hassle" and "I need my space."

What we need to do is actively seek to establish and nurture bonds of love with others. For it is commitment to love that alone has the power to sustain us through all the personal sacrifices and renunciations that are necessary to maintain communion. And it is this kind of suffering, borne of love, that produces strength of character, maturity, and abiding happiness.

Marriage should be the primary communion which leads people through these dyings and on to happiness. The love of man and woman should be strong enough to move them to want to have children who can then share in this love. Their love for their children should be strong enough to make them selfless in caring for their needs.

When persons choose to be "lone rangers", stress may be relieved and freedom may be found, but at a heavy price. The deep, unmet need for communion begins to drive a person to seek compensation in self destructive ways. Addictions are a primary example. Alcoholics seek privacy, as do drug, sex, and gambling addicts. These addicts are living in self imposed isolation, and the link between their addictions and their loneliness is direct.

The same dynamic of communion and loneliness are at work in the realm of religion. The communion we are all most in need of is communion with God. Only he can satisfy our craving for complete, unbounded, unending happiness in love. Yet, we are mysteriously tempted to flee communion with God because of fear of what he may ask of us, what burdens he may lay on us, and what freedom we think we may lose by obeying his commandments.

God is gracious, though, and never forces himself on us. He invites us to enter freely into communion with him. He wants only our good, and always acts and speaks in our best interest.

That is why he said, "It is not good for man to be alone." It is because he created us for love communion that it is imperative for us to overcome the temptation to go it alone in life, and to overcome, also, the fear of love’s demands. Communion with him and others in love is a matter of emotional and moral life and death. Without the communion which love brings, life is unbearable. With love, on the other hand, we are already in heaven, for to find love is to find God: "God is love" (1 Jn 4:8).

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap