Loneliness

Everyone is lonely. I have come to that conclusion.

Human beings have an overarching need to be in community and communion with one another, and yet the means we have been provided to do so - verbal and body language - are very imprecise. We cannot really know what other people are thinking or feeling. We can make some guesses. In the case of a spouse, we may be intimate enough with him or her that our guesses are right more often than not. But we never really know.

I learned about all this in school, as I majored in Communications. But I think I first really noticed this when my daughter was a baby. I realized I did not have a way to reach her - not really. And she did not have a way to reach me, other than crying when she needed to be fed, changed, or put to bed. It gets better as we learn the signals and sounds that tip us off as to what other people want to communicate with us (consciously or not.) But the fog never fully clears.

That leaves us with a certain loneliness. I think of Hamlet, who just has no way to communicate the ache and hurt. And even though he says, "but break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue," he spends much of his play fighting to find words for his grief at the death of his father, his anger that his father was taken from him. Hamlet tries to communicate his rage I suppose the way many of us do - in frustration at getting ourselves heard, we turn to art. Hamlet puts on a play, "to trap the conscience of the King" All he succeeds at is making the King defensive. The King's reaction is entirely internal to himself - it is not the reaction Hamlet seeks at all. All Hamlet finds is a tacit admission of guilt, not the "purgation" he would really like.

But none of us can fully say, and none can fully hear, for as Hamlet says, he cannot "Make you a wholesome answer, for my wit's diseased."

There is one who understands. God, who made us, is aware of all the neurons sending electrons, all the chemicals swirling around in our minds. And while the idea of God as someone who can "spy" on you at any time may seem uncomfortable, I find it comforting. I am not completely alone in my mind, if my Creator is present to everything I am and think. And someday, on the last day, perhaps we will all be joined with each other, and all the noise and interference, all the crossed wires, will be gone. One day, I will fully know, even as I am fully known.