Lonely Is A Choice
Being lonely isn’t the same as being alone, so when God specifically said “it isn’t good for man to be alone,” it should start us thinking. People can fundamentally exist while being alone but we can’t sanely endure indefinitely, procreate or share, all essential components of a productive on-going life.
We gain essential nourishment by eating, but without digestion (time and science) food doesn’t nourish the body. By assimilating food into the body, growth or refurbishment is enabled, temporarily abating hunger and offering a brief respite from the continuous carnival of survival. If we digested food all day, every day, we would simply get fat and ultimately die. The delicate balance lies in eating just what we need and then allowing our complex digestive system to perform it’s magical assimilation. The mind is very similar.
The healthy mind needs to be fed a complex and varied diet, where knowledge (new information) is like raw fruits and vegetables, compassion is the carbohydrate, sharing is the protein and love is the final and most essential ingredient, the water of existence and our daily dessert. After feeding the mind each day, time “alone” is needed for digestion. Without practically applying and absorbing these four mind-food groups, assimilation is impossible. This might also be meditation or prayer. This is healthy. Finding satisfaction alone adds the enlightenment of healthy objectivity to every other relationship we encounter or choose to develop. Being lonely, a painful disease of the mind, is very different, being lonely is a choice, although in otherwise healthy people, most often an unconscious one.
You can be lonely in a crowd, with a friend, by yourself, when afraid or simply when lost. In a world of over 6 billion people, plus one adoring creator individually invested in each person (regardless of age, race, religion or behavior), loneliness is far less-likely than over-extension. If you’re lonely, you need only make two simple changes to cure the feeling.
1.) Choose to reach out externally to others and/or internally to God through The Holy Spirit, and
2.) Change from your ways (which weren’t working too well) to God’s ways which always work.
God did provide universal health care for both the “alone” and “lonely” things thousands of years ago, the former was always the easiest to see, while the solution to the latter has been visible only through faith. Faith is also a fundamental choice, a healthy one. If you’re lonely, choose to reach out and change. One final thought, God offers the only permanent remedy for loneliness, the other, although usually better than nothing, is just temporary.
JC CALKINS with COMMON SENSE 4 UNCOMMON PEOPLE
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