John 13:34

 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 

"Happiness only real when shared", some of the last few words written by Alexander Supertramp aka. Christopher Johnson McCandless. A man who spends much of his life chasing (and finally obtaining) a life of solitude. A transcendentalist's life, free from all deceit, greed, and selfishness of humanity. But out there in the midst of solitude absolute, his humanity (his "what he was made to be ness") catches up with him and he begins to get desperately lonely. If you haven't watched, "Into The Wild" you should... you really should. 

Nothing seems to be able to soothe the ache that comes with loneliness. Sometimes, loneliness has the ability to stand above it all. It defies all consolation, reason, and will. There are times when it will just lie there; deep inside the heart and ache a long lingering familiar kind of ache. It’s an ache that seems to be able to bring out of us every time we’ve ever felt abandoned, worthless or alone. And, when it finds us, it sits there like a rock, resolute and unwilling to budge. 

Through we, as a people, have progressed and overcome, loneliness has continued to find us with familiarity as if it were some incurable, age-old disease. It greets us at the office, on the street, and in our homes in a way that is almost intimate: As if it knew all our desires, and dreams, and all the things that make us ache. But, through our loneliness we also find within ourselves the care and understanding we wish we could receive, perhaps even the care and understanding that could be extended and shared with the people around us. Through it we see our desire to be intimate and with one another.  

And so, I don’t think that it’s as if we were a lonely people, but a people of love that have forgotten how to love. It’s almost as if we have lost our essence (our "what we were made to be ness"). God, from love, had created us to love, and somehow it has slipped away from us. 

Auden once said in one of his poems that, “we must love one another or die”. As if love was as necessary to our survival as the air we breathe.  And, as I reflect on Auden I can’t help but think there is truth to what he said. Maybe when we withhold our love, we all die a little bit inside. Maybe without deeply loving and caring for the people around us, and trusting that they will do the same for us, we all lose somehow. After all, in loving others we learn to love the parts of us we find unable to accept, and in loving God we learn how to love each other, existence, and ourselves. 

"The greatest disease is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness despair and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love."

Mother Teresa 

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