One sunny day, Franny and I were walking along a tree covered boulevard. The air was crisp; our steps were too. We were chatting happily, noting how fortunate we were to have lived this long and this well. Yet I was lonely. I thought to tell her, and I knew that she would smile and wonder what she could do to help. But I knew that even her most compassionate efforts wouldn’t make things appreciably better. It might placate but never completely banish the ache. She loves me. We are married for forty years. We have shared children and grandchildren, laughs and hard times. We are very close. But I still felt incomplete.
When I was young I began to seek a cure for this loneliness. First, I sought love. I was sure that having a girlfriend would do the trick. Each of my early girlfriends were lovely and loving. They helped but not completely. When there was no strong relationship, I would prowl the streets of Cambridge, searching, searching, and feeling empty as I searched. Then I married, more than once, and found a great love but it was not enough.
So I turned to the spiritual life, studying Buddhism and Sufism, and living in a Sufi commune, which was lively and full of company. I found solace in the idea that loneliness, like other feelings, was a construct of mine—just a thought—that would flow by, like a river, if I didn’t get too nervous about it. I learned to meditate and to observe this river of feelings; when I did, the loneliness did, indeed, flow by. But not so much at night, when I was alone on the river. I hoped that, with discipline and tenacity, I would I would eventually lift myself above all the petty human feelings that oppress me: envy, for example, hurt and defensiveness. I loved William Butler’s image of wise old men, hoping it mirrored my own journey:
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
But I never climbed to the top of that spiritual mountain, never freed myself from the slings and arrows, and, eventually, the image grew cold in my mind, leaving me lonely still. Much as I tried to transform loneliness into solitude and peace, I succeeded only some of the time. I came to accept the truth of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: “We live as we dream—alone…”
Now seventy-four, I know that I will never fully lose that ache, and I know that I am not alone. Though I have rarely discussed my loneliness with others, I believe that almost everyone shares this condition. It is a part of the human condition. Philosophers have noted it over the millennia. I remember, especially, the despair of the Existentialists, Camus, Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, who I read avidly in my youth. I loved Camus best, particularly his advice: carry on in spite of the pain because it is the only thing we human beings can do. I have carried on.
Don’t get me wrong. There are many times with Franny, with my family and friends when I lose myself in play and love. But I also accept that old philosophical saw that we are ultimately alone, ultimately encapsulated in our individual bodies. The older I get, the more this simple truth becomes just that: a simple truth. There is nothing to fight. I live with it as I might an old friend. When it comes to consciousness, I greet it with some affection. “I see that you have come to visit me tonight. Rest. Stay a while.”
This is the great value of aging: that you let go of the idea that you can ‘cure’ everything, that you can make yourself better and better, if only you work at it; that you accept your limitations, including your singularity and your loneliness. And that brings rest.
Barry Dym 