Loneliness #3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

It's easy to be around old friends. They have survived learning about your strengths and weaknesses. Since they know your story, you don't have to explain yourself to them.

But many of us are not surrounded with old friends. We are in job after job, location after location, and spending time with old friends isn't part of our lives. Loneliness sets in.

Last Friday's post told the story of an immigrant to the U.S. who, though she sometimes struggled in a new country, said "yes" to invitations to an American holiday every year. She did the right thing by saying "yes." As did this introvert in a new home.

Arthur and his wife fear lonely isolation when they go to their new home too. But this book has given them a strategy to overcome it:

"It isn’t about how I feel about any place I have lived, nor about my fear of isolation in a new city. It is about the neighbor I choose to be in the community I wind up calling my home.

"And there lies the challenge to each of us in a country suffering from loneliness and ripped apart by political opportunists seeking to capitalize on that isolation. Each of us can be happier, and America will start to heal, when we become the kind neighbors and generous friends we wish we had."

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