When was the last time you experienced loneliness? Do you recall the feeling?

The enveloping ache and the swarm of emotions—the sadness, the anxiousness, the uncertainty, the smallness, the shame, even—that the experience entailed? Terrible, wasn’t it?

Do you recall what it was like to feel “on the outside” of so much? Outside of relationship. Outside, as it were, of the flow of life, while you looked on and looked “in” with helpless longing?

I say here, “experience,” because loneliness is more than a mere feeling, isn’t it? It turns out that loneliness is more a mode of being, for which we seem completely unmatched and unsuited.

Perhaps you don’t need to recall it. Perhaps, as you read now, you find yourself squarely in the midst of it. If so, I’m sorry. I’ve been there too.

That hollow condition—that pain so distinct, so particular and total—is one that we all know in various seasons and to some degree. It’s the death of joy, the death of clarity and vision, the death of meaning, the death of ambition and hope. Loneliness is a condition of disoriented alarm, a cry from somewhere within us that screams, “I’m meant for something else—I’m... empty and I’m starving!”

Loneliness, like all universally negative experiences, points to something for which we are made. Loneliness, it turns out, exists as a warning to us and tells the story of who we are in reverse.

Is connection really vital? The evidence might surprise you.

In his landmark 1942 study of infant mortality in institutions, Doctor Harry Bakwin observed the deadly effects of institutional structures upon the orphaned infants and children they housed. At that time, mortality rates for such children ranged from a horrifying 66 to 100 percent among the population of orphans under one year of age.

Children in such settings were primarily given what they needed in the strictest of biological senses; they were clothed and fed and medicated. But the stark revelation from Dr. Bakwin was this: “failure of infants to thrive in institutions is due to emotional deprivation.”

Later his findings were summarized by Dr. Ines Varela Silva, a biologist and researcher from Loughborough University in the U.K.

“Most of these deaths were not due to starvation or disease, but to severe emotional and sensorial deprivation – in other words, a lack of love. These babies were fed and medically treated, but they were absolutely deprived of important stimulation, especially touch and affection.”

In summary, the meeting of our physical needs is not enough—not by a longshot. We are made for belonging and relationship. We are built for intimacy. We are not meant to be alone or isolated.

Loneliness is like a disease in our bodies

Bakwin’s discoveries in 1942 continue to yield fruit and shed insight. We now know, for instance, that loneliness acts like a disease in that it begins to pervade us in a self-replicating dynamic. Feeling temporarily excluded can initially motivate us to engage in social risks like new friendships, or to work with others toward such ends so long as we are rewarded for such efforts with new social bonds.

“Prolonged feelings of social disconnection turn the positive impulses toward the negative,” however. (This insight comes from Cacioppo and Patrick, who have devoted their professional lives to the study of loneliness and its effects.)

The effects of loneliness are never “merely” emotional. Loneliness becomes like yeast in bread; it begins to negatively influence everything from social aspiration to overall health decisions such as diet and exercise.

We also know that not only do “we” (as a self) experience loneliness as something more than temporary emotional distress, but so do our brains. In fact, it seems our brains cannot and, therefore, do not, distinguish between loneliness and acute physical pain.

When socially excluded (lonely) test subjects were observed with fMRI technology, they displayed activation in precisely the same region of the brain as other test subjects exhibit when they are in acute physical pain.

Our brains know something essential about both states—about physical pain and about loneliness—that both can threaten death. Both hurt accordingly.
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So what is it our souls need to be healthy and fully alive?

So – “what does all of this tell me about who or what I am; about who or what we are? What can I discover about my purpose and meaning in light of this?”

We know we need relationships. We know we crave them. But discerning a need or a longing is not the same as knowing the nature of the being that issues the cry. One is a sign of the other to be sure.

The work that remains is to take from this evidence of the effects of social privation, in order to finally identify the nature of what or who, has been shouting at us.

Against the backdrop of the above, some ancient words seem to carry different meaning and relevance:

“The LORD God said, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)

Many of you will have heard or read this passage. It comes from the Bible. It’s often invoked at weddings and, is often reduced to those implications. The words certainly pertain to marriage, but, as a pronouncement, they tell us something essentially more about the fabric of our humanity.
As the scripture above indicates, God saw fit to establish humankind on the grounds of

companionship.

The story also tells us something prior, something about the nature of God, which, the story claims, spells itself out into ours: Turns out, it is not good for God to be alone, either.

Turns out, according to the story, that God’s very nature is, and always has been, communal.

“Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness...”

God’s reference to Godself here occurs in the plural.

You may have heard that before, too. Something about a Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I know, this can sound confusing. Trust me, it has confounded every person who has dared to bring their mind to bear on how this could be. But I wonder if you’d join me, just for now, in glimpsing the implications of the premise?

This dosctrine in Christianity is essentially about a relationship—an unbreakable bond of love and intimacy—that exists as the very basis for the entire universe.

The Christian story makes the claim that God conferred his image into our own. God made us like him, those that are social and are mutually dependant, and are, accordingly, capable of love.

At last, in the face of such a story, we are confronted with the matter of those many orphans. To be capable of loving at all is also and at once, to need and require love for survival.

In other words, we don’t have the capacity to love without also inheriting the need for it.

Think about that last hug, that last bit of mercy extended to you after a fight or mistake. Think about your best friend. Think about the latest project at work with your team.

Pretty awesome, isn’t it? All kinds of humbling and wonderful. All kinds of gift and reception.

We can’t live without either of these two.

Ever known someone who expressed only one of these? Who only ever gave love without receiving it, or only sought to receive it and never gave it... and was fulfilled? I’ve known a lot of people in my time, but I’ve never met one of those.

Philosopher and historian, Yuval Noah Hararin once said, “Humans are now hackable animals... The whole idea that humans have this soul or spirit, and they have free will, and nobody knows what’s happening inside me, so whatever I choose whether in the election or whether in the supermarket, this is my free will, that’s over."

If you’re honest, does this sentiment feel like it honors the depth and breadth of who you are?

Does “Hackable Animal” properly account for the surge of delight that flooded your heart the first time you first fell in love?

Do these words capture the somehow great delight and deep calm that happens when you meet or connect with a friend that deeply understands and values you?

I certainly don’t think so. And, despite whatever message has been transmitted to you, whatever conditioning has taken hold in you because of such statements,

I bet, were you and I sitting together we’d prove something different to one another.

Sitting across from one another with a cup of coffee or a nice cold pint—perhaps, as we looked out from a patio—we’d know, friend, that the universe of meaning that existed between us in that moment is more evidence to us as to what we are and for what we were created than any statement of the like from such an “expert.”

We’d know that we were made for each other–that we are meant to be in relationship with another. We might even know that we were made by a God who is love. And in honor, both, to the children who never made it out of the orphanage, and to the child in both of us—the child who made it this far, carried along by Grace—we’d know together that our great need for relationship is simultaneously our greatest gift.