Article March 1, 1975 Issue

What You Alone Can Give

FEROL AUSTEN

How much time and energy can be wasted in just being lonely! Especially when there's so much that needs doing in the world and you alone can do it. Nobody else can be you or live your life or give what you can give. After all, what makes you valuable is your God-given identity.

Yet one of the most talented people I know is also one of the loneliest I've ever known—and I know she's lonely because she talks about it all the time. She has more friends than I have, but she's afraid to be alone for five minutes.

A lot of people seem to have this problem. It has even been referred to in such high-sounding terms as "cosmic" or "universal" loneliness—as if we were all condemned to moments, or even years, of feeling as if we didn't quite belong.

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