One Hundred Years of Solitude

"Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone."

-Paul Tillich

Running across that quote this morning reminded me that I was going to suggest to P that we spend a few weeks working through Tillich's classic on Paul's Epistle to the Romans. The letter is probably the most difficult piece in the whole New Testament, and now that we're sticking our toe in the water going to church in Manhattan when we're there, this could be like our own two-person EfM group. The thought crossed my mind as I was listening to the second reading in church last Sunday, a snippet from Romans, and pondering on how anyone gets anything out of these short readings without seeing them in the larger context.

That moment in church was one of several these days that brought home the degree of isolation P and I, mostly I, have created for ourselves over the last several years. Looking around the sanctuary, there are a few familiar faces from previous visits, but we don't really know anyone seven months after we first came through the door, and we never stay for coffee hour so of course we don't know a soul. And we could never join an actual EfM group, the little misfit community that brought us together, because we could never commit to showing up each week for nine months. So it's just us.

Then yesterday evening we attended a mixer with live music at the Rockwell Museum, our very own Smithsonian right here in Corning. We've been going to these things since we arrived here, at least once the Covid restrictions lifted. Again, we didn't know a single person there. It's even worse than in years past, because when Peg was at Guthrie she'd usually see one friend or another from the operating room in the crowd.

This started a conversation among us about how we're really Southerners, how we can't let go of Panama City or Perry and all the people and places that filled out our lives there for decades. But it really goes beyond that, doesn't it? When we go to the Perry Elks Lodge we may know one person--the old guard has either moved or passed away, and we've never met those who joined over the last six years. And on nine out of ten trips to the St. Andrew Bay Yacht Club it's exactly the same, for the same reasons.

Part of what's happened is that we're simply never regularly anywhere, so our family and community consists of each other and the cats. Thankfully, I really enjoy P's company after all these years, and it seems she usually enjoys mine. And maybe that's part of the explanation for what's happened--I don't much want to share the time away from work with anyone but her, and that sentiment has grown more acute as we both feel time growing short.

There's much said about loneliness in the post-pandemic world, about the loss of community and withering of the clubs and congregations that have always been the glue holding this country together. What we're experiencing seems at least in part a variation on that broader experience. But what makes our situation a little unique is that I imagine if I asked you where you live or where you're from, you could answer that without an extended pause. We really can't do that anymore, moving from place to place to place to place to place literally over intervals of a few days or a couple weeks. It's hard to build any sort of meaningful relationship with a town one visits for a spell, then leaves.

And any time we're in one place for more than maybe a month, the itch starts all over to get back to some other place before a sort of emotional claustrophobia sets in. We've become wired to live this way. I reckon that growing up living in 18 houses in 18 years, I always was.

I guess we're leaving town again

We're moving out and moving in

Gotta break the news to all my friends

But they won't care

They'll just find another face

To fall behind, to take my place

To run way out past second base

And just stand there

-Jason Isbell, Dreamsickle

My childhood and the present, in one verse.

Another hazy one out there. I thought it might be wildfire smoke again, but it's burning off now and looking to be sunny and hot.