By MITCHELL KALPAKGIAN
The Catholic Guide to Loneliness, by Kevin Vost, Psy.D. (Sophia Institute Press: Manchester, NH, 2017), 161 pp. $16.95. Available through www.Sophia institute.com or 1-800-888-9344.
This timely book addresses a universal problem that all persons suffer at some point in their life but one that has become a matter of grave concern for social scientists in this century. While “It is not good for man to be alone” as God declared in Genesis when He instituted marriage, man at various stages in the course of a lifetime needs to prevent, overcome, and alleviate the burden of loneliness that oppresses the human spirit and robs life of its joy. However, as many recent studies have shown, the problem has become especially acute in the last decade as 35% of adults reported the pain of emotional isolation and the absence of confidants to relieve this sorrow.
In the opening chapter, “Rethinking and Relieving Loneliness,” Dr. Vost recommends practical ways people can avoid battles with loneliness with preventive measures. For example, he refers to “adoptive social thinking” in which a person firmly resolves that a condition of loneliness, although burdensome, “is not awful, will not last forever, and can be borne for as long as necessary” because “God Himself can give us the grace and the strength we need to bear with and overcome any adversity we face, including the face of loneliness.” Man’s reason and will provide resources to endure patiently the situations of isolation beyond man’s control such as the loss of a spouse.
Man can also resist tendencies that precipitate loneliness such as hypersensitivity that leads to “awfulizing” or “catastrophizing” — magnifying a sorrowful event by “making situations out to be worse than they are or might become.” A person can also behave with paranoid, passive, or aggressive reactions that alienate others: “This, in turn, can lead the lonely, without their awareness, to alter, abate, or turn off their social skills, perhaps not risking a smile or a greeting or extending or receiving an invitation.” Loneliness, while often the consequence of external causes like illness or death, also develops from internal causes like state of mind or attitude that Vost calls “lonely thinking.”
Vost also recommends the wisdom of the Stoic philosophers as a remedy for loneliness. They teach men to think rationally about the vicissitudes of life and not “to waste time in disturbing themselves over things they cannot control, which include the behaviors of other people” — those who reject, ostracize, or ignore others and impose solitude on them. Marcus Aurelius reasoned that, no matter how sociable, affable, or gracious a person acts to cultivate friendliness and dispel loneliness, he should prepare to encounter in the course of normal life “the overbearing, the treacherous, the envious, the unneighborly.” Using his power of reason, man, then, in some measure can control or limit the degree of loneliness that he suffers and not react as a passive victim.
All persons have the obligation to console the sadness of others by the exercise of the virtues that foster sociability, friendship, good will, and mirth that combat solitude. Citing St. Thomas on the cardinal virtues, he explains that the virtue of justice includes respect for others, friendliness, and gratitude — all qualities that cultivate sociability. The virtue of fortitude moves a person to “take the kinds of risks of reaching out to others that might put an end to our loneliness” and “to make those initial overtures to another person that make all the difference.” The virtue of prudence always seeks the counsel of the wise who have knowledge of the antidotes to loneliness.
The theological virtues also provide a guide to loneliness. According to St. Thomas, the virtue of religion that honors God with worship and inspires prayer develops a relationship between God and man that relieves loneliness. Vost states that faith, hope, and charity “join our souls to God, and, in the words of the Catechism, “They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being.” Belief and faith in God conquer the sense of alienation and insignificance that accompany the lonely. Likewise, the virtue of hope disposes a person to form and execute plans to accomplish goals — a course of action that combats the passivity and listlessness that loneliness breeds.
This “inborn inclination to strive for good things” naturally brings people into contact with others and alleviates a sense of isolation. The virtue of charity that teaches love of neighbor and the joy of giving never fails to bring balm to an oppressed spirit. If charity governed all human relationships in the manner that St. Paul describes in I Cor. 13 (“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude”), Vost asks, “How could we possibly speak of a worldwide epidemic of increasing loneliness?”
Not to be overlooked, solitude — as witnessed by the lives of holy men and women in prison, in the desert, or in monasteries such as St. Thomas More, St. Catherine of Siena, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn—provides many benefits for productive work and spiritual growth that lead to great spiritual classics like More’s The Sadness of Christ and Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. The “Solace of Solitude” that accompanies the ascetic life should not, however, be confused with the depression and inertia of loneliness.
Just as human friends dispel the melancholy of isolation, the friendship of Christ — a topic explored in depth by St. Aelred’s Spiritual Friendship — also invites a relationship that inspires a person to open his heart to a confidant who seeks “to be our dearest friend who cares for our well-being with unbounded love.” Nothing dispels loneliness more than virtuous or charitable friendships because they inflame the fire of love that touches many lives. Summarizing St. Thomas’s treatise on charity, Vost comments, “When our hearts burn with the fires of charity, their far-reaching flames serve to warm strangers and even our enemies.”
Vost also examines the various causes of loneliness that many impose on themselves and others, a situation he describes as a “Culture of Loneliness.” He notes the trends in American society that contribute to this problem: the erosion of traditional social bonds cultivated in the family, neighborhoods, and charitable associations; the consumerist mentality that seeks happiness in the accumulation of more possessions rather than in the joy of human relationships; and the substitution of social media for the normal interaction of friends, neighbors, and family members in homes and hospitable social occasions: “Don’t let your Facebook friends replace the friends you see face-to face.” Nothing dispels loneliness or the impersonal communication of texting more than “the familiarity and uniqueness of the human voice.”
Vost shows the many ways that love of neighbor dispels the sadness of isolation. Listing “Thirty Ways to Love Your Brother” as natural remedies, he cites St. Therese of Lisieux’s “little way” of performing simple, daily acts of kindness simply to please others. Love of neighbor anticipates the needs of strangers and newcomers and expresses affability to relieve them of the coldness of loneliness. Smiling, inviting someone to dinner, welcoming people with hospitality, and writing letters all provide balm for the heart and soul.
Love of neighbor also obliges a person to find time to enjoy others rather than always plead the excuse of busyness. It learns from the example of Mary who chose “the better part” and avoids the excessive preoccupation of Martha’s busyness: “being so busy that we rarely have time to call on our friends sends them the message that they are not important to us, making it less likely that they will reach out to us either.”
In the chapter “The Loneliness of Christ” that reflects on Christ’s last seven words, Vost gleans great wisdom on the remedies for the sadness of solitude. For example, the words “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” instruct man to eliminate all causes of estrangement that originate from hardheartedness and grudges “from someone once close to us whom we have refused to forgive or who has been unforgiving of us.” Christ’s words “I thirst” — a declaration of His humanity — serve as a reminder that all persons can respond in some way to the sufferings of others. “Do we take much time to think of the lonely people in our lives . . . and of how they might thirst for our attention?” The lonely can also learn from Christ’s words “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” to turn to God in prayer in the times of desolation and the dark night of the soul.
In short, Vost’s guide to loneliness gives this modern form of alienation, disconnectedness, and suffering the serious attention it deserves. God does not desire, intend, or design man to be lonely. This problem originates from the habits, trends, and impersonal ways of modern society and the foolish personal choices of individuals that overlook the simple, traditional, moral answers found in the wisdom of the past and in the Christian teaching about love of neighbor.
If a person ignores others, hold grudges, lives for money, devotes all his hours to work with no time for leisure, and spends more hours in television viewing and internet surfing than in actual conversation and enjoyment of other people, then this most fundamental of human needs — for men, women, children, and the elderly — goes unsatisfied and, like Christ on the cross, man too “thirsts” because he feels abandoned, unimportant, dehumanized, and lost in a universe where everyone is too preoccupied with himself to respond, serve, notice, please, and be a source of grace to others.
A human life is measured by the bonds of love, friendship, and affection that unite and enrich all human beings — not the time wasted on the inhuman, mindless, and trivial pursuits that occupy modern man. As Vost simply states and cogently argues, the problem of loneliness is not insurmountable: “. . . virtues hold the key to happiness. Virtues are habits and dispositions to know the truth and do the good.”
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