Reflection #100 (2nd March 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
As I said at the top of today’s service, our exploration today is around the need to nurture meaningful connections, in a world where many are lonely, alienated and disconnected. Even in this densely populated city – we must be getting on towards 10 million Londoners now –though we bump up against each other every day it’s still so easy to feel anonymous and isolated. And in theory we’re very connected in a virtual sense too, to the whole world, via the internet. But despite this, I suspect most of us would acknowledge that true connection isn’t always easy to find.
Think of how it is – what a lack it is, or would be – not to have significant connections in your life. To be without friends or companions with whom you can share mundane moments, talk about nothing in particular, tell of what’s happened in your day, all the joys and frustrations, and have them know and care about your story as it is still unfolding. To feel it matters to someone. That you matter. I would imagine that many of us have experienced such loneliness and disconnection at times in life.
Philosophers typically talk about different sorts of loneliness: transient, situational, and chronic. Transient loneliness is the sort which might come upon any one of us at any time, a passing feeling, a lonely moment, maybe when we’re alone in a big crowd, or temporarily stuck at home alone. Situational loneliness has some identifiable external cause, like a bereavement or a break-up, and it tends to last for a longer period, maybe months or years, after the triggering event. Chronic loneliness is a long-term situation which is often related to having built up insufficient ties with others. The reasons for this may be ‘rooted in the self’ in some sense, in a person’s personality traits, or an inability to reach out to others and make personal connections, but there’s more to it than that.
There are numerous contextual, political and economic factors which increasingly play a role in creating a climate where many are socially excluded. George Monbiot has written powerfully and movingly on how decades of neoliberalism have ushered in what he calls ‘The Age of Loneliness’ – just think back to those infamous words ‘there is no such thing as society’ – but Monbiot says: ‘Structural changes have been accompanied by a life-denying ideology, which enforces and celebrates our social isolation. The war of every man against every man – competition and individualism – is the religion of our time, justified by a mythology of lone rangers, self-starters, self-made men and women, going it alone. For the most social of creatures, who cannot prosper without love, there is no such thing as society, only heroic individualism… having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. We have destroyed the essence of humanity: our connectedness.’
In a world of job insecurity, and short-term or zero-hours contracts, where relatively few people can expect to stay put in one place for long and put down roots, where working hours are often long and antisocial, and shift patterns are such that it’s hard to sustain regular social commitments – and where those who are out of work are hit by the lack of affordable places to meet and make connections, and all those other life-constraints that come along with being under financial pressure in austerity, (thinking, for example, of those whose disability allowances have been cut, limiting their mobility) – well, in these conditions, loneliness and alienation will most likely result.
Catholic theologian Gerald Arbuckle has written at length about this political aspect of loneliness and disconnection, and argues that, whether or not we are personally lonely at this instant, we have a responsibility to help alleviate the conditions which bring about loneliness – by working for the common good, seeking truth, fighting prejudice, welcoming the stranger, resisting the culture of individualism – and more generally doing what’s right for the most marginalised people in our society.
Whatever the root cause of loneliness for a person – situational, structural, or ‘rooted in the self’ – it can lead to a vicious cycle that’s hard to break out of. The more pressing and evidently desperate our need for connection, the more it can cause others to recoil, to back away from us, and the more we experience such rejection the more likely we are to misread social cues out of learned pessimism. Or we can get into a mindset of ‘I can’t do right for doing wrong’ – I know this one – and we withdraw.
Kira Asatryan, in her book ‘Stop Being Lonely’, makes the simple but astute point that loneliness is not a lack of people but a lack of closeness. This is why you can feel lonely in the middle of a crowd, or in a city of 10 million people, as we Londoners know. She says that closeness consists of two things: ‘knowing’ and ‘caring’ (and being known, and being cared for, it has to go both ways, there needs to be a sense of give and take). Both knowing and caring are verbs – things you do – they’re not states you fall into accidentally – they require intentional and sustained action. And the good news is that you can consciously work to build closeness with anybody who is at hand (and who responds positively to your overtures – we need to be attentive to boundaries and respect them – of course nobody is obliged to become intimate with us). By ‘knowing’ she means ‘understanding another person from that person’s perspective’ and some key things which make that possible are engaging in deep and real conversation – authentically speaking and listening about the stuff that really matters – and consistent presence – reliably showing up, spending time, living life alongside one another. By ‘caring’ she means ‘being able to feel and show that the other person’s well-being matters to you’ – not by trying to fix their problems – but paying attention, noticing how they’re doing, checking in.
I only have one significant quibble with this book, which I’ll mention in passing – the author is a bit down on technology and suggests it causes loneliness. But I’d argue that prior to being able to engage in ‘knowing’ and ‘caring’, as she suggests you do, need to be able to have contact, to be present in some sense, with another person. It is clear to me that there are plenty of people who through no fault of their own are physically isolated (through reasons to do with illness, disability, neurodiversity, economic factors including overwork, and so forth) and you probably won’t be surprised to hear that as far as I’m concerned technology can provide a valuable channel through which to connect. It’s just a tool for us to use. Though we do need to be thoughtful in how we use it.
So, all that said, if we’re feeling lonely, isolated, disconnected, what might we do about it? Perhaps we can start with the words from John C. Maxwell I shared earlier, and which are on the front of your order of service. He said: ‘When you understand that being connected to others is one of life’s greatest joys, you realize that life’s best comes when you initiate and invest in solid relationships.’ From that I take three things: First, we need to understand how truly important it is to cultivate real, meaningful, connections – how they are often life’s greatest joys. Second, we need to realise that, unless we are incredibly lucky, such deep connections won’t just fall into our lap, we need to be proactive and initiate them, reach out to others – which is inevitably a risky business as it comes with the possibility of rejection and disappointment – we might attempt to open up our true selves to connect with another and find they’re not that interested. It’s painful to have our interest rebuffed. And third, we need to invest in those connections, put the work in to maintain them, so they will last, hopefully deepen, over the course of a lifetime. Again, easier said than done, we’re all so scattered.
I want to add a note from Andrea M. Darcy here – she makes a distinction between real connection and something else that often masquerades as connection – something more surface-level. She writes: ‘Real connection is more than just talking to others or sharing interests. After all, we might talk for over an hour with someone about sport or TV, even if we secretly can’t stand them. Connecting with others is a sense of being open and available to another person, even as you feel they are open and available to you… There are other behaviours which might look like connection on the surface but they often aren’t connection at all. Perhaps you are always trying to connect with others by being interesting, funny, or smart, and you are always looking to others’ reactions to know what to do next. In your need to feel accepted, you are not truly being yourself, or are even manipulating others for attention. That’s not connection, it’s showmanship.’ An interesting perspective from Andrea M. Darcy.
And this staying-on-the-surface, getting stuck in small-talk, is just one of many things that has the potential to block true, deep, connection. One of the most obvious blocks is not putting ourselves out there, not meeting and talking to people, whether that’s in-person or online. If we withdraw into ourselves, if we’re out of circulation, then any possibility for connection is nixed before it’s started. As I previously mentioned this can be a paradoxical effect of loneliness; we may feel so sad and lonely – or so wounded by past troubles – rejection or exclusion or trauma – that we just can’t face putting ourselves out there again. We need to break out of that trap. Take small steps. Another block to connection is a kind of ambivalence – perhaps even a fear of entanglement and commitment – we want connection, and support, but maybe we’re wary of what it might demand of us if we become emotionally involved another person, or a community, and care for their well-being.
As Taylor Nicioli said, in the reading we heard from Brian, it’s important to pay attention to ‘bids for connection’. These are all the ways that we reach out to each other – not necessarily through grand gestures, just little daily opportunities to connect, get closer, build relationship (like Nicioli’s example of pointing out an interesting bird to her friend, who responds positively by turning to look at it). These ideas on ‘bids’ come from the well-known relationship psychologists John and Julie Gottman. If we’re on the receiving end of such ‘bids for connection’ we have three choices: we can turn towards (acknowledge the bid and be warm and receptive), we can turn away (ignore or brush off), or we can turn against (a more actively hostile and irritable dismissal response). And if we want to build a deep connection with someone we need to notice that these ‘bids’ are happening and respond positively towards them more often than not. And of course we can’t just sit back and wait for these bids to come to us. We need to be courageous and reach out to make those bids towards others. And it does take courage to reach out and to respond. And it does also take courage and resilience to accept it graciously when the answer is ‘no’. Not everyone will want to connect with you, for whatever reason, and that has got to be OK.
In a sense, as Victoria Safford said in the reading we heard from Antony, we are all ultimately alone. But making meaningful connections – whether that’s connecting to our deeper selves in solitude, with others in one-to-one relationships, or more collectively in community, and with God (or something beyond, however we may conceive of it) – this making of meaningful connections is truly a religious act. The most sacred stuff of my own life has come to me through connection, I know. As Safford said, ‘When I say God I mean that place of meeting, that place where solitudes join… God is the space in between, the bridge between solitudes, the ground where we meet, you and I, or any two, by grace… all of us, together, are alone, and the emptiness between us is waiting to be filled.’
So, if you are already blessed with connection and closeness… treasure it. And maintain it. Consider what you might do to nurture and deepen the web of relationships you already have. And if you’re not so blessed in this regard… then lament, if you need to, let yourself be sad about it. But think about reaching out too. If you’ve been disappointed, pick yourself up, and try again. Think about trying something new to connect and find closeness. Be brave, and ask for what you need. And perhaps, as we return to our daily lives, each one of us can reflect on the part we might play to help create a less lonely society, through the choices we make – both personal and political – in the week to come. May it be so, for the greater good of all. Amen.
Reflection by Jane Blackall