Article November 2, 1981 Issue

Five steps out of loneliness

TERRANCE BRYAN EDWARDS

Over many years a young man had grown accustomed to taking five mental steps that, as he later came to see, brought considerable loneliness into his life. On his arrival—say, at the company cafeteria, a party, a business gathering, or a new job—he would:

(1) Affirm to himself that he would like to be somewhere else; (2) confirm what he had dreaded—he knew no one there; (3) convince himself that nobody seemed to notice or need him; (4) observe that everyone else seemed self-assured and happy while he languished in a fearful sense of inadequacy; and (5) decide that most of the people were of a different age or social group and thus would have nothing in common with him.

Such stages of thought are no doubt familiar to countless folk around the world whose lives are blighted by loneliness. They were the very steps the young man unthinkingly took one evening when he arrived to represent his company at a business gathering. As he stood apart watching hundreds of men chatting happily together, he prepared himself for a lonely night. He had not been there long, however, before he began to realize that as a Christian Scientist he could and must master loneliness. It was scientifically feasible and correct that he do so, for he saw that those five steps amounted to one thing: an attempt to give credibility to belief in a kind of existence that God had not created, would not create, and would never condone.

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