Loneliness: practice detachment and master it

Isn’t it amazing how a song can capture exactly What you feel? It can even sum up an entire ‘season’ of your life. You love hearing the song every time it’s played and you’ll even go out and buy yourself a copy. Years later you listen to the song and suddenly your mind returns to that situation, feeling like it was yesterday. Such is the supremacy of our memory around these powerful emotions.

This happened to me about five years ago. With a huge life change after a key failed relationship, and having lost everything I loved, it was an Avril Lavigne song that marked my life. “I’m with you”, was a top 10 song in the US. It seemed to perfectly capture my loneliness and despair, and how I felt at the core of my being. Research indicates that a surprisingly high proportion of the population goes through dark periods, dark enough to consider suicide. So dark was this moment that the song seemed to lead me to these thoughts, and strangely these thoughts were very comforting.

Loneliness is an emotion that can affect anyone at any time. It can come out of nowhere. I have childhood memories of having a big family reunion every year. It was something we had been looking forward to for months. We were together for several weeks some years and it was always memorable. The only problem was the inevitable goodbyes, they had to come sooner or later. Missing people like this brought me a sense of loneliness, even though I had my immediate family around me. The point is that the onset and effect of this emotion cannot be accurately predicted; emotions are raw things, when they hit they hit.

I love the quote, “no matter how many people you surround yourself with, at the end of the day you are cosmically alone.” – Alan Dodge. The 16th century priest, Saint John of the Cross, said: “Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be held captive by any earthly thing.” Both quotes talk about the suffering that loneliness implies and what is the remedy. The first mentions the undeniable fact: we come into the world alone and we leave the world alone. The second proposes to the reader to order his priorities to protect his soul from the negative emotional effects of loneliness.

However, looking deeper, these two men are referring to something deeper. There are so many evils in living in dependence on others; the full end of this is the “codependent relationship” that becomes highly abusive.

The secret seems to be secondment–the ability to overcome the desire for worldly things, including relationships, achieving a higher perspective. Again, Saint John of the Cross says: “In detachment, the spirit finds calm and rest so as not to covet anything…it is at the center of his own humility.” This is widely known and practiced in many Eastern religions and has great power.

Detachment means there must be a healthy independence of people and circumstances, that is, not being in need, so that we can preserve the worlds of others and, more importantly, shore up our own. It means that we have no reason to offend people with our opinions. We can allow them to be as they will be. As for loneliness, detachment is a way of thinking and acting that preserves our emotional state and helps us suffer less from loneliness. It is based on the path of soul fulfillment.

Detachment takes maturity and it is a process that requires time and field of practice. Knowing the theory is the first part; practicing detachment should be a lifelong goal.

© Steve J. Wickham, 2008. All rights reserved worldwide.