Quote roundup #9: On compassion born from solitude

Loneliness can lead us inward, and self-reflection can propel us to deepen our compassion toward others.

Image created in Canva by the author, Jeannie Ewing. © 2024

Loneliness is pervasive in our world. The past ten-plus years, we have told ourselves we are more connected than ever before because of social media and the way we feel close to the people we follow and subscribe to. It’s interesting to me, though, that loneliness is more of a problem. Shouldn’t we be feeling less alone and more fulfilled if we can click our loneliness away?

I think all of you reading this know that’s not how it works anymore. Once, I deluded myself into believing that social media was an adequate substitution for real-life relationships. This was shortly after Sarah’s birth, and I wasn’t able to travel or participate in community activities or outings with friends for years. Social media became the only way I could see what was going on with everyone and feel, in some fishbowl sort of way, that I was actively participating in their lives.

Over the past three years, I have deactivated my social media accounts. The increase in heightened volatility, polarization, and “othering” dragged me down. I grew disillusioned and disappointed with what I saw regarding—and who I saw posting—divisive articles and spewing vitriol over, well, every topic imaginable. The catharsis and relief upon my personal mental health after separating myself from the information overload has done wonders for my sanity.

But what about loneliness? More people are spending time exclusively interacting with each other via text, apps, and social media, especially Alpha Generation (today’s teens). Engagement with what’s happening around them, with family and friends in the room with them, or at a restaurant, or outside sitting on a park bench, or in the classroom, is diminishing. In fact, many of today’s adolescents don’t read anymore.

Long ago, before the onset and onslaught of Big Tech, I read something paradoxical: that solitude might be the cure for loneliness.

I’ve pondered this from time to time. The moments I spend alone, with my thoughts and feelings and ideas, are often fruitful. Sometimes, yes, they are fraught with discomfort or exhaustion, but I can consciously point to my restlessness or frustration and allow it to metabolize.

Maybe some of us avoid solitude, because we can’t sit with our pain. Maybe we’re afraid we’ll cry. Or feel empty. Or remember our unsettled grief. Maybe we’re terrified we’ll be bored. Whatever the reason, many of us are unable to sit alone for longer than a few minutes without distraction.

In this month’s quote roundup, I want to explore some insights from Henri Nouwen, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, about the concept of what loneliness tells us about human suffering and, even more, compassion.

When you are able to create a lonely place in the middle of your actions and concerns, your successes and failures slowly can lose some of their power over you…Then you can care. Let us therefore live our lives to the fullest but let us not forget to once in a while get up long before dawn to leave the house and go to a lonely place.¹

It seems to me what Nouwen was saying here is that practicing “the pause” throughout our day is an exercise in grounding ourselves to the present moment. It’s easy to get stuck in our heads (I do every day), with the mental labor spiraling in chaos. Checklists and to-dos, activities and appointments—these all detract us from the ability to stop for just a few minutes, center ourselves, and enter into the here-and-now.

But what does it mean to deliberately “leave the house and go to a lonely place”? I think what he means is to create mini-retreats, to dive into a quiet place within. There is a type of sanctuary in every human heart, if only we learn to access it and stay inside it a while.

What we see and like to see, is cure and change. But what we do not see and do not want to see, is care: the participation in the pain, the solidarity in suffering, the sharing in the experience of brokenness.²

One of my favorite concepts of Nouwen’s is this: that cures can’t happen without genuine care. That may seem obvious, but his point is that most people like to focus on solutions to problems, like a cure for cancer, but very few are able or willing to accompany a person in pain.

To sit with another, to offer that person solace and room to be and do whatever they need—to wail, to rage, to sob, to ask, to collapse—without judgment or intervention is a far more difficult discipline. Yet this is the essence of genuine care, and it’s the way we can reframe the philosophy that humans are only as helpful as their solutions and cures.

How does it combat loneliness? By demonstrating that you have the courage to hear and receive someone else’s suffering. In order to do this, you have to first practice retreating into that quiet, “lonely” place within yourself. When you discover that you enjoy yourself and can unravel the things that unsettle you, then you can take that emotional maturity and do the same with others.

Our tendency is to run away from the painful realities or to try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators, and prevents a real community from taking shape. Cure without care makes us preoccupied with quick changes, impatient and unwilling to share each other’s burden. And so cure can often become offending instead of liberating.³

I experienced this firsthand after Sarah was born. So many well-intentioned friends and family members tried desperately to make my grief disappear. At first, I didn’t understand why. Why couldn’t they just allow me to hurt, to be sad, to express that anger and fear freely? But it occurred to me over time that most people don’t know how.

We don’t want to see someone we love suffer. Trying to solve problems or provide pat answers, however, makes us into the “rulers, controllers, and manipulators” Nouwen wrote about here. True healing happens at the heart level, at loving another person enough to say, “You’re right. This isn’t fair. I want you to know that I want to be with you in this, however you feel safe and whatever you want to share.”

Every human being has a great, yet often unknown, gift to care, to be compassionate, to become present to the other, to listen, to hear, and to receive.⁴

Isn’t that empowering—to consider that every person has a “great, yet often unknown, gift to care?” I don’t think a lot of us believe that. How can every person carry the potential for compassion? Yet I know it’s true. I believe in the best of humanity, in all the good things we are capable of. I know we have the ability for genuine belonging, for unity, for wholeness, for peace.

Let’s get back to the interior journey that will lead us to deeper, more meaningful and compassionate connections with others.

1. Nouwen, Henri. Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life (Ave Maria Press, 2004), 30.

2. Ibid, 35.

3. Ibid, 40.

4. Ibid, 42.