Journal of Sacred Work

The awareness of loneliness might be a gift we must protect…because our loneliness reveals to us
an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for him [or her] who can tolerate its sweet pain.  – from The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen

   It was autumn, 1997. Fortune had smiled on me. Although I was out of a job because of the sale of the health care company I had helped run, we had plenty of money. There was only one problem. I wasn’t going to work any more.
   Our wonderful children were grown and on their own. My terrific wife was happy in her work writing a weekly column for a major newspaper. I wasn’t needed any longer – either as a bread winner or as a father.
   Day after day, I stared out the window trying to enjoy this unfamiliar freedom. Without the stimulation of work, I found myself in the midst of a profound loneliness. Soon, this loneliness got a name…

   "Depression?" a friend said to me. "I can’t figure out why you would be depressed. You’ve got everything."
   And this was part of the problem. I couldn’t figure out why I was depressed either. Human emotions are not so readily guided by our cognitive thinking as we might like. If my depression had a logical base, then logic could also solve it. But logic was useless. Whenever anyone told me I had no reason to be depressed, I became more depressed. I also learned to never try and convince someone why they shouldn’t be down.
  My wise son offered marvelous counsel in the middle of all this. He told me early in my period of melancholy, "Maybe it’s okay to be depressed for awhile, Dad. Don’t fight it."

   This made no sense to me when he said it. But after awhile, I realized it was the best advice I got across three hard months of recovery. Bromides and Hallmark-card aphorisms are of no help to people who feel lonely and depressed. Neither do most other efforts at trying to reach the brain when it is the heart that is hurting.  In deed, they can make a mockery of genuine suffering.
   What I finally learned was the truth of Marie Antoinette’s statement: "Tribulation first makes you realize who you are."
   Most of us fight loneliness with every fiber of our being. As Nouwen also writes, "Sometimes it seems we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief."
   Until 1997, I had never felt the knife of depression. My career had been made up primarily of a string of successes. And the money from the sale of the company seemed like another one. The thing I had often asked myself and others across my life was, "What would you do if you had all the money you needed?" Most people have trouble with that question. But no one every said, "I think I’d spend my time exploring my loneliness."
   I was cast into this pit against my will. I wouldn’t wish the experience on you but I can tell you it was life changing. Once I had worked my way through that period, I began to appreciate what loneliness can teach. If we can find the courage to let go of the fight, the light we need will one day (or one night) return.
   The challenge is not to let go of what we learn in our own darkness. Like aftershocks, I occasionally experience recurrences of the isolation I felt through the winter of 1997-98. But as these echos send shivers through me, I try to remember something I’ve learned about pain during my forty-plus years with Crohn’s disease. What I learned seems paradoxical to those who haven’t done this. Fighting pain increases its intensity. Letting go of the fight eases the pain.
   What can the universal human experience of loneliness teach us. I know the answer for me, but I don’t know the answer for you. All I know is that to be human is to experience such times. We can run from them. We can seek to anesthetize ourselves from them. We can fight them. Or we can endure them, walk next to our pain and treat him as a teacher.
   I know that you have felt pain that may far exceed anything I have described. I also believe that your awareness of your own pain is what may be making you a better caregiver. Those you care for are often frightened and their illness may have made them feel deeply sad. When you can find the courage to reach out, in silence, from your own pain to touch the edge of another’s need, you become one who brings some healing to a wound. 
   It’s not that you drive away the darkness of another. It’s the way you honor the sufferer with your loving presence.

-Erie Chapman

*The paintings are by Lou Scurti

Poem for today:

If I die, survive me with such sheer force
that you waken the furies of the
pallid and the cold,
from south to south lift your indelible eyes,
from
sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.
I don’t want your laughter or
your steps to waver,
I don’t want my heritage of joy to die.
Don’t call up
my person. I am absent.
Live in my absence as if in a house.
Absence is a
house so vast
that inside you will pass through its walls
and hang
pictures on the air
Absence is a house so transparent
that I, lifeless,
will see you, living,
and if you suffer, my love, I will die
again

–Pablo Neruda