The Loneliness that Kills

We are not lone wolves--and there are no exceptions.

Photo by Nancy Stapler on Unsplash

“Nearly all research into healthy aging has found that the key to a long, happy life is not diet or exercise but strong social connections—that is friendships. Loneliness accelerates age related declines in cognition and motor function, while a single good friend has been shown to make as much as a 10 year difference in over all life expectancy. A huge meta-study performed in part at Brigham Young University, which reviewed 148 studies with a combined 308,849 subject participants, found that loneliness is just as harmful to health as not exercising, smoking 15 cigarettes a day and alcoholism., and fully twice as bad as being obese. Still more startling is a 2010 study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that looked at 2,230 cancer patines in China. Social well-being, including frriendship, turned out to be the number one predictor of survival.” (As quoted in my book, Inside Job, page 165).

Here’s the bottom line, we’re just not good alone.

As hard and challenging as relationships are, we need them and here’s the deeper truth—we want them. In our core, we know that it really is true what the Bible has told us all alone in the very opening chapters of the very first book of Scripture: “It is not good to be alone.”

Many of us live in this “not good”—so many of us. We feel this “not good” and we are dying of this “not good.” It’s shocking to read the statistics I have quoted above and yet, it is even more sobering and shocking to realize that many of us are actually living in this story—the story of not good; the story of feeling isolated.

Knowing these statistics and writing about community in every single book I’ve writtten, put a zeal in me to search for a new community in our move to our little mountain town in Western North Carolina two and a half years ago now. We left our pack of friends in Colorado and felt the primal threat rising up within us that life together is better than a life alone. At the top of my list in our move here—at the very, very top of my essentials of what I wanted and needed to re-order; make over and start a new life here, was this: I needed to know that there were people like me; people that shared my convictions about life, God and nature.

I knew I did not need alot of people. But I also knew I would need a few people—a few people who possessed something I wanted and needed in friendship.

A few of my defining characteristics in what I wanted and needed in a new community were these:

-People who did not think or live by a binary way of thinking: You’re in or out; you’re right, I’m wrong; insider /outsider way of thinking but were accepting, loving and emotionally healthy and mature.

-People who loved nature and understood the power of beauty; people whose lives where captured by the outside world as well as the inside world.

-People who practiced hospitality—who provided a sense of “welcome” and did not hold me at arms length for being new and the outsider. I’m not meaning by “hospitality” the serving of a meal; but, a serving of heart and soul and invitation.

-People who shared a faith in God—who lived their lives with a greater story than making money; clinging to power and who somehow lived with brokenness and their brokenness made them more real; more human and more loving.

Since, I’ve done “church” my whole entire life, I started there—with church folks—I started looking for people who sort of spoke the same languge I was speaking within the four walls of a church. How fortunate I am to have started this way because, I’ve found my people. I’ve found a tribe that I am hooking up with to “do” life with.

One friend I have now doesn’t “go” to church anymore. Yet, it’s so odd that when we are together, I have within me a deep sense of being in the church of two or three—the only church Jesus, himself ever described. I often say to him, “It was so good to be church with you today” at the end of our time together. I have no idea if he knows what I am telling him. I am telling him that I feel like it’s church when we’re together.

I’m here.

You’re here.

And God is also very much here.

And it’s enough.

Our time is marked by transcendence; life giving conversation that is reciprocal and deep and a satisfaction within me that says, “It is good to not be alone.”

I think it’s true to say in my move here, I was on a hunt. I was hunting for a few human beings who seemed to know what I know; folks that walked with a limp because of a brokenness in their soul; people that lived with a sense of transcendence and spiritual hunger; people that were not content by all their “doing” but wanted a sense of “being” that was soul satisfying.

I formed a “circle of trust” (see my other posts on this) with a few other souls and in this circle began to talk on a deeper plain. We’ve been meeting forming this sense of trust where our own stories are held, told and shared. It’s my hope that these people will walk me to my grave and I will walk them to theirs. I would like to be here for the long haul. It’s that kind of place and I am one to tell you that place really does matter in our search for friendship. Certain kinds of people tend to hang out in specific kinds of places be it bars or fellowship halls. Place matters in finding your people.

I knew that I was no lone wolf. I needed a few others to “do” life with.

This theme of community has been stired up in me as I’m leading my church through Lent using the story of Lazarus in John 11. It’s been so interessting to lead my own church through my own book, The Lazarus Life. In this story, we see Lazarus being called out of the tomb—all wrapped up in graveclothes—all bound up—trying to free himself of the things that held him back—but he couldn’t. He was alive—but just barely.

This vivid scene describes how many of us live; how many of us need the hands and heart of others to be free of issues and knots in our lives that bind us. Tonight is my last night to give a talk on this compelling story. Tonight we are focusing on Jesus’ own words to those standing around watching Lazarus struggle to come forth. He said, “Help me get loose of the graveclothes.” It all means, that we need each other on the road to freedom. We can’t do life alone.

Look at the painting above by Mattia Preti. See the man holding the cord of rope and helping Lazarus get free? To me, this is friendship; this is community; this is church.

Here’s my poem about this great theme. In this poem, I use the metaphor of the lone wolf that I have seen stalking through the West where I use to live. The lone wolf becomes more than a metaphor when you realize so, so many of us are living our lives as lone wolves. Living as a wolf is no way to live for a human being.

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