BBC Radio 4 2016-01-09

Good Morning

Late on Thursday evening an excellent documentary on BBC1 described loneliness as a silent epidemic of our times. The Age of Loneliness focussed on case studies reflecting all ages and backgrounds and the viewer was left reflecting – could this be me in the future… or actually, yes, this is me now…what shall I do?

100 year old Olive’s main fear was dying alone. Several had lost a lifelong partner and were struggling to adapt. A younger man, dealing with mental health issues, was forced to consider whether his small flat was a prison or his sanctuary. The one common denominator was that loneliness is hard to describe: you can only feel it when you’ve got it.

The programme also conjured up for me two other important points. First, being single does not necessarily equate with being lonely.
And secondly, the programme often touched on the effects of the internet and social media on the human psyche. Does an online presence add to or alleviate this loneliness? University research I have recently conducted on the characteristics of a digital audience suggests, paradoxically, that it is the younger generation searching for a perfect online life who are deeply unhappy – a view reinforced this week by the Charity ChildLine.

Feeling lonely affects the whole being. When I make pastoral visits to people in their homes they talk openly about losing their get up and go, feeling depressed and becoming spiritually disconnected. It’s body, mind and spirit stuff.

The author and Christian Sara Maitland, who also featured in Thursday’s documentary, said that choosing solitude [which she has done] is a different thing to having it thrust upon you. What happens if you just can’t deal with it and the clouds get darker?

Many of the Old Testament Psalms identify totally with feeling alone, being isolated, perplexed and vulnerable. John Henry Newman describes it as “real isolation of thought and spiritual solitariness” and many of us have been there.

But the central message of the Psalms on this issue, for me, is that as well as God being with us, however lonely or isolated we might feel at times, we are never really alone in the shared human experience …..and, as this commendable documentary showed, we should not be afraid to talk about it.