21: Loneliness & Shared Humanity
/Is there a way to feel less lonely, even in the midst of our loneliness?
**What follows is most of episode 21: Loneliness & Shared Humanity from the Praise Through It podcast. Listen here, or read on!
First of all, I’d like to reference the last episode: heart pivots. I talked about how God changed my heart from needing sunshine to wanting cold and snow, and all the good that’s brought into my life. I’d like to say that He put that lesson to good use because I am writing this about 10 days later and it continues to snow. We’re up to close to two feet in the front of my house. It just doesn’t stop. So… just FYI, when you’re going to broadcast that you’ve learned something, please be prepared to prove that you’ve learned it!
Today I want to talk about humanity, kind of centered on the human experience of loneliness. As a military spouse, I am well-versed in long, lonely spans of time. If your spouse travels, you get that. But married people whose spouse goes away aren’t the only ones who get lonely.
We all get lonely. It’s a universal experience.
We get lonely in our feelings, in our thoughts, work, faith, friendships, politics. We get into a space where we feel disconnected from other human souls. We get into a space where we think, this is all me, I am by myself here and there’s nobody here to understand or help.
I know there are a million ways to unpack loneliness, and I know I’m not your therapist. But like I said, I want to talk about it in the context of shared humanity, and here’s what I want to say about it.
I mentioned recently that my family and I have been watching Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, and that there are very well-placed soul-singing and flash mob dances as part of the very fabric of the show. It is brilliant. It’s like a Broadway show but on television. What’s special about all the singing--aside from the perfectly placed song choices--is Zoey is the only one who can hear people singing these songs. She is suddenly endowed with this magic power after she’s stuck in an MRI machine during an earthquake.
Zoey calls these musical numbers people’s heart songs. Like, when her friend Mo projects confidence but actually feels lonely, Zoey can hear Mo’s heart song of loneliness in the form of a song called The Great Pretender. And when her mom tells her everything is fine even though she had this intense burden of caring for her ill husband, Zoey hears her mom sing I Wanna Dance with Somebody. I could go on and on, it’s just the best. So poignant, beautiful, creative, all the things.
What struck me most about the show, though, is how beautifully it shows the humanity of each and every soul, and how connected we all are in that humanity. I think we so often go about our days feeling disconnected, partly because of how much we do over a screen. And partly because we’re human. We can convince ourselves of anything. So when we’re sitting in a room filled with people, and we’re all up in our heads about how lonely we feel about something, we think we’re all alone.
I’m thinking we don’t have to stay that way.
The scene that best showed this idea was when a beloved character died. The entire cast sings almost a ballad rendition of American Pie. They hand off the singing baton to one another with such precision that you’re wrapped up in the number with them, from beginning to end.
And you’re crying.
And you see that each of these characters know, deep down, how connected they are with one another, even if it’s not explicitly acknowledged. Even though they’re from different families and social circles, they share this human experience of grief and loneliness, and their hearts acknowledge it, even if their words don’t.
Within the context of the show, Zoey is the only one who can hear this particular part of the death experience. So even if each character feels alone in their grief, Zoey (and the audience) know that despite how differently everyone looks or behaves during the wake of this person’s death, their hearts are in the same exact place: grief, sadness, gratitude, and loneliness.
This led me to think about our loneliness under the umbrella of our shared humanity. Loneliness is one of those feelings that is easy to hide and outwardly dismiss because we think nobody wants to hear about our loneliness. We don’t want to be too down or we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But what if we consider our shared humanity, and what if we consider the idea that maybe those around us are singing the same heart song we are.
I truly believe that much of humanity is singing the same heart song on a very regular basis. Do I have a big scientific study to back this up? No. But here’s what I do know:
Even through the capital-B Big Things happening in our cultural and political divisions, the nitty gritty is still the same.
The sun rises every morning and sets every night.
Kids go to school, whether that’s your home or another building.
Someone in your house has to go to work.
The animals have to be fed.
The snow has to be plowed or the lawn has to be mowed, depending on where you live.
You’ll get a text or DM from a friend today.
Someone will post a Reel on Instagram or a video on TikTok that they will be embarrassed by in 15 years.
Clocks tick.
Time passes.
Moments come and go.
And the feelings remain. No matter what -- no. matter. what. -- joy and sadness, gratitude and frustration, loneliness and grief still exist. Those feelings remain within each and every one of us, and I want us to know that about each other. I want us to be comfortable with that. I want us to acknowledge it and ease our own burdens by seeing the shared humanity between one another, and then turn around and ease each other’s.
Starting with the people and animals living in your house, then outward. Your kids’ friends and their teachers. The bus drivers. The grocery store workers, the healthcare workers. The teller at the bank, the cashier at the pharmacy. The delivery people who leave packages under awnings and on surfaces so they don’t get buried in snow. I’m not suggesting we spend deep time thinking about everyone’s heart song. I’m just saying - maybe we start operating out of the idea that our heart songs are closer to each other’s than we might think.
So when you feel lonely, my encouragement for you is this:
Focus on the humanity of it all.
What I know is that when we start to think of other people’s humanity, it’s hard to stay lonely. It’s hard to stay disconnected. So I think reaching for the humanity of and with one another is necessary.
It’ll be a lot harder to live in this hardened heart of a place where we alienate any and all people based on our feelings of loneliness in this great big world, or based on how different we think we are, or based on any other excuse we give ourselves so that we can stay in our comfort zone, even if that comfort zone is a little too lonely.
Now, go watch Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist.
Sing the songs.
Find the humanity.
And remember that you’re not alone. Not even close.
What’s true about loneliness is it can take over. It can make us feel isolated. It can lie and tell us we really are alone. It can tell a story we don’t want to tell. And it can make decisions for us that we don’t love.
What’s also true about loneliness is it can be a trigger for reminding us of our shared humanity. It can remind us to reach out and look for other people’s heart songs so that we don’t isolate ourselves for too long.
What’s excellent about reaching for that shared humanity is when we can connect our hearts to someone else’s, the loneliness might not be magically cured, but it is curbed. It is alleviated. It is lessened. It is not as daunting. It’s not as consuming.
What’s praiseworthy about shared humanity is right in the phrase - shared humanity. In it, we turn from loneliness, isolation, and dare I say anger and more of the like, to compassion. Compassion with ourselves and with others, and our capacity to receive it is that much greater.
I’m leaving you with a blessing for an experience of shared humanity today and every day.
May your heart song today be one that reaches out instead of draws you further in.
May your experience of loneliness be one that brings you closer to seeing the humanity within yourself and in others.
May your experience of loneliness be one that brings about a greater compassion, and a greater capacity for love.
May you experience compassion today as the blanket of peace and comfort it’s meant to be.
And may you always know that God, the author and finisher of your faith, the creator of your heart and soul, sees you, knows you, and loves you, just as you are.
Show notes:
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist
Enneagram
Praise Through It, episode 20: Heart Pivots
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