"I've got 20 friends in this pack of cigarettes," the man said. "They're always there for me. You want to take away my 20 friends? What are you going to give me instead?"
This guy is quoted in a 2005 Newsweek
piece on the connection between the emotions and the body, which aren't as separate as we think. Chronically lonely people--and we are all lonely at one time or another--are apt to turn to cigarettes or booze, or television, or whatever numbs the pain.
Then along comes Valentine's Day, and the loneliness can feel compounded if you are not attached in the way(s) the culture says you should be. Those fortunate to love and be loved--and not just in the romantic sense but deep friendships and family relationships--will, paradoxically, hurt.
An inevitable result of deep love is deep grief. Doggone it. The late Catholic theologian Henri Nouwen writes about this in "The Inner Voice of Love" (Doubleday 1998).
"The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful," he says. A year ago today I held the hand of my 95-year-old grandmother as she drifted off to sleep, in death. Today, a friend grieves because the love of her life dropped dead of a heart attack last spring. She has dreaded like the Plague this Hallmark of all Hallmark days. Another friend has lost contact with her daughter because she's in a religious cult. "When those you love deeply reject you, leave you or die," Nouwen said, "your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply."
Happy Valentine's Day.
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