Connection and community for the lonely

After seeing a poster recently about the problem of loneliness in aged people, I wondered how bad the problem actually was. So I looked at the latest results from the Office for National Statistics about loneliness in the UK (for November).

It wasn’t as bad as I expected. Overall, only 7% feel lonely often or always, but men more than women when you break it down. As far as I could tell, the highest percentage in the “I feel lonely often or always” was 9%, and that was in the 30– 49 age group. The over-70s were actually the lowest, at 4%.

That’s only a survey for one month, and the total sample size was only a few thousand. Also, when you add in the category “I feel lonely some of the time”, the percentages jump to about a third. It’s still a bad thing for people to experience, and we still need to work at building community. Whatever the statistics, I still read stories in the news of people dying alone in flats and not being found for weeks; I still come across those who are alone and hating it.

Two questions come to mind. The first is, what can we do about other people’s loneliness? The second is, if I feel lonely, what can I do about my own loneliness?

I can start where I have an easy way to do something about it: at church. I can make an effort to meet up with people, whether that means having people over to my place or taking the initiative to arrange meetings at some other venue. This should be second nature for churchgoers. Practicing hospitality can happen in all sorts of contexts; it’s a way of life, not just a matter of formal invitations to your home. It’s about generosity in sharing your life with others, and can be in small as well as big ways. I recently read of a woman who has made the decision to choose the real person over the machine checkout at the supermarket. It just keeps a bit of human contact going.

This sort of sharing one’s life will not be easy or natural for everyone. Humans are messy. It’s easier and simpler, and just altogether less hassle, to interact with a machine. The wealthy have always used their wealth to buy privacy, to buy more space for oneself and less chance of having to deal with others. And the wealthy is us, we Westerners; that is why about 30% of households in the UK are people living alone. (The same percentage who are sometimes or often lonely. Go figure.)

But keeping to ourselves, not giving our time to others, that’s not healthy. It’s not particularly Christian, either. We are saved into a family, into a community to which it is a privilege to belong. Our eternity is not just individual bliss, but being part of the people of God, in relationship with others. And even if now on earth those others are still imperfect, it is a great blessing to be brought into relationship with them. God sends us out to extend those relationships to the whole world, to every nation; to love our neighbour.

Being Christian should be the blessing to others that staves off loneliness because it promotes connection and community, in small and big ways. I am planning to ditch the automated checkout machine and instead spend my seconds interacting with a human. I will try to talk to my neighbours more. Community is hard, but it’s worth it.