When are we lonely? asks the columnist in his column on happiness in the Peace Weekly. When we are excluded, he says, by those we love, when as children we were abandoned by parents, when we are separated from someone we love, when Jesus was rejected by his beloved disciples on the day of his death--just a few instances of how we can be affected by loneliness.
Second reason mentioned: when we have no one to help us, when there is a feeling of rejection by the whole world, and when we ask for help in a desperate situation and are refused.
Third: the loneliness that comes when no one needs me, when I have given my resume to dozens of different companies but there is still no opportunity for work. And when refugees who have been removed from their homes have nowhere to go. In these situations, we can't help but be lonely.
Fourth: when we are not understood. Especially in families when we are not able to communicate, with families finding it difficult to sit together at meals and very often eating separately.
Fifth:
the feeling of loneliness with the approach of death. Aging and the
accompanying loss of youth and the problems of old age bring sadness.
Sixth:
the loneliness that comes with sickness. Job is the prototype of this
kind of loneliness, the kind that comes from a lack of personal concern
for others.
Jesus came to us as the consoling one; we have not, he says, been living according to his example.
Since we are all lonely we should know how to console, but because of hand phones, computers, the internet, and many other electronic devices we are now withdrawing from personal contact more than ever. Isn't this the reason that Jesus asked us to love one another?
