Article February 5, 1979 Issue

Single and satisfied

RUANNE Y. GENTRY

Everyone is single—that is, individual. Whether we're married, unmarried, divorced, widowed, each of us is actually, spiritually, the individualized reflection of the one indivisible God. Each of us is complete and unique. Our real identity isn't slotted into human categories.

From among the various explanations for increasing numbers of single adults in the United States, this salient point emerges: people yearn to understand and express their own individuality. Sometimes the search for this understanding is baffling, because it's approached solely from a material standpoint. The current preoccupation with self-realization often leads "me." Animal magnetism, the supposed pull of materiality, may suggest sensualism as a means of fulfillment. But this path ends in frustration and alienation.

What is missing in this self-centered emptiness? Love. "But that is just what I am seeking," the response comes. Seeking, but not expressing. True self-satisfaction is found in expressing the Love that is God. The spiritual qualities that constitute our true selves, such as integrity, purity, love, joy, are forever accompanied by the opportunity to express them. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, tells us, "Happiness consists in being and in doing good; only what God gives, and what we give ourselves and others through His tenure, confers happiness: conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart, and nothing else can."^{Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 17;}