Loneliness has a cure: Seek to serve

Oasis

The Beatles once sang, ‘Look at all the lonely people…where do they all come from…where do they all belong?” The words of this hit single of the ‘60s continue to haunt us several decades on.

In spite of the many social media platforms available to contemporary men, loneliness continues to be a serious problem. It affects people of all ages. Children are lonely because of divorced parents or parents who are too busy. Adults are lonely either because they are at the very top or at the very bottom in the pecking order of society. There is also loneliness among married couples and friends when all the jokes have been said and the laughter has waned, that despite being together one feels alone.

And then another reason for loneliness is because of the people who are not lonely. These are the elite socialites who are too caught up in their closed world that they do not bring any love and attention to the people who are genuinely lonesome.

In the midst of these causes cited for loneliness, psychologists believe that there is one main reason why people are lonely. It is due to an excessive and selfish desire to be loved. When one seeks too much love, the less he is loved. The less he is loved, the less capable he is of loving others.

Thus, by seeking to please oneself all the time, one gets caught in a downward spiral. The more one struggles
to get out of it the more one is captured by it, resulting in deep loneliness.

Among the many cures for loneliness, the most effective is to get out of oneself and to start thinking about others. When we are consumed by loneliness, the sure way to beat it is by going out to serve others and to really begin to care for others. Caring especially for the unfortunate, the poor, the oppressed, and the unloved is by large the only proven panacea to cure loneliness.

Thus, the wise recommendation that those without shoes should go out and find a man without any feet works to cure loneliness as well. Surely then we will discover that all the lonely people come from our suffering humanity and they belong to you and me!