Loneliness

Welcome to the January 2025 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To!
#52

Welcome, Brave Reader, to a whole new year!

It's going to be a good one, right? Maybe not good for everyone, everywhere, every day—that might be a little unrealistic given the current condition of the world we live in. But, as much as it is up to me, I'm going to make this a good year.

At least, I'm going to give it my best shot.

Have you seen headlines about the loneliness epidemic?

The Atlantic published an article called The Anti-Social Century, subtitled 'Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality.'

When we moved to our new home this summer, I came with the intention to make friends, hang out, and get involved.

My personality is not geared toward any of that, but in the past four years since the pandemic, I experienced more loneliness more consistently than any prior season of my life. I think it was only our frequent trips to see friends and family in other places, especially once the Covid threat died down, that kept me sane.

And that was living in a house with four other people and two cats.

I found out I can be around my family and still feel lonely, especially during times when they are in school and at work. Knowing we'd all be together at the end of the day definitely helped, but loneliness is a feeling—you can't measure one person's against another, or one day's against another day's, or the conditions of this loneliness versus the conditions of that loneliness.

Being alone can feel good, even great, but loneliness as a feeling never feels good. And sometimes there is a fine line between the two.

Anyway, moving here with the intention to make friends, and getting into that mindset in the year or so before we moved, definitely made a difference to how we've hit the ground here.

But—and this is often the case in my life—the universe has conspired to bring about the thing I wanted and decided I would work toward almost without me having to lift a finger.

Almost exactly a year before we moved, and way before we had any idea we'd be moving to this part of the country, I went to an event in Pennsylvania. It was only two days, Saturday and Sunday, but every session I sat next to the same guy. We only talked a few minutes, but he told me his name was John and he was from Baltimore. I talked to other people at the event more than I talked to him, but he was the only person I exchanged contact info with at the end.

This was the kind of event where you get the impression anyone who is also there is probably the kind of person you could be friends with.

Once we found out we were moving to—of all places—Baltimore, I reached out to John. He and his wife started giving us great info and tips on the area. Then they set us up with their realtor (who was fantastic and helped us find and buy our house). We met up with them on our house-hunting trip and, though they live in another town about 25 minutes away, we still get together once or twice a month.

Then, not long after we moved in, a neighbor Kate came over with her two kids and cookies and introduced herself. She said they were excited to have more kids in the neighborhood. Our kids started hanging out with their kids, a little tentatively at first, and eventually they connected us to other families in the neighborhood.

And then somehow we connected with more families and brought them into the 'neighbors with kids' loop, and they brought in some other neighbors and before we knew it, we were part of a texting chain with ten other parents, and our kids now have ten other kids in the neighborhood they hang out with on a regular basis.

They all went sledding together last weekend and the weekend before.

I don't know how that sounds to you, but it seems crazy that in the year of our Lord, 2025, we would be part of a neighborhood where so many people know each other and are friendly and hang out and send their kids to each other's houses to hang out.

Like, what?

That's some idealized 1950s small-town America stuff that everyone thinks should happen these days but which no one actually believes does or can happen. And yet, here we are.

Loneliness is real. And loneliness since the pandemic is especially real.

If you find yourself feeling lonely, and want things to begin to change, I believe you have to decide with some level of conviction you want change in your life... and probably put yourself out there a little more than you'd like... but if you are willing to put in an ounce of effort, I believe the universe will trade you back a pound of reward.

That's probably true of a lot of things, but especially when your desire is for more friendship/community/fellowship in your life and in the world, I believe God/the universe/the underlying divine impulse of all life very much wants the same thing and will help you get/discover/create/grow/shape it.

Here are a few tips I've picked up along the way, and which I will repeat for myself now, since I often forget—

1. Don't be picky about who you call friend. Sometimes the people you want to be friends with aren't necessarily the people you need to be friends with, or people who are looking for friends, and the ones you aren't initially drawn to could be turn out to be the best friend(s) you ever had.
2. Don't try to control the process too much. You aren't perfect, your home is not perfect, your family is not perfect, nothing is perfect... try to accept the condition you are in and allow other people to accept it too. If they can't then they are not people you should hang out with. And it goes the other way too.
3. If in doubt about how to begin, start with an invitation to coffee/tea or lunch with an individual, then move on to dinner out or at your place with them and their significant other or family, if applicable. Inviting people to your house can be super awkward, but some of our closest friends came from doing just that.
4. Most of us live in a culture of one-and-done with this kind of stuff, so you need to continue putting the invitation out if you want to go deeper and get more comfortable and make hanging out a pattern instead of a one-time thing.
5. If you can swing it, hosting dinner once a week or twice a month for several friends or neighbors can be life-changing. We did that from 2009 to 2016 and it was one of the best things we ever did. We're trying to start it up again.
6. I find keeping the TV off when people come over to be super helpful for conversation, unless the point of hanging out is to watch something specific. Go for music at a relaxing volume instead. If you're really bold, make people check their phones at the door too.
7. Get to know more people, join a club or group, go to events, try to strike up conversations. In other words, spread out your socializing among different people or groups of people, don't be afraid to add people to your social circle—you don't want all your eggs in one basket.
8. Speaking of events, if you're looking for a monthly event to attend full of really interesting and cool people, look up Creative Mornings and see if there's a chapter near you. It's free, once a month, in person, and—I find—worth the social anxiety.

Wrapping up this email, here's a stack of books I'm reading at the moment, along with two cats and some half-dead plants. I also read a graphic non-fiction book last month about the friendship between C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien called The Mythmakers. Check that one out if you are interested in the godfathers of fantasy fiction as we know it.

Happy New Year! All the best to you and yours in 2025!