Loneliness – A Quandary that Refuses to be Solved (by David Ducklow, Chaplain)

In today’s fast-paced world, it is often the un-said hope and expectation that we, along with our friends, family and colleagues are okay all the time. At least we don’t want them to tell us that they feel anything otherwise. Then we may not need to worry about them. In a delightful story, Eeyore, the glum and introverted donkey found in The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, expresses how this is a false belief we have, because, unless we believe the lie we are telling ourselves, we simply are not O.K. all of the time.

In this story, Pooh and Piglet wonder if something is wrong with Eeyore, since they had not seen him for several days. So they put on their hats and coats and trotted across the Hundred Acre Wood to Eeyore’s stick house. Inside the house was Eeyore.

“Hello Eeyore,” said Pooh.”Hello Pooh. Hello Piglet,” said Eeyore, in a glum sounding voice. “We just thought we’d check in on you,” said Piglet, “because we hadn’t heard from you, and so we wanted to know if you were okay.”

Eeyore was silent for a moment. “Am I okay?” he asked, eventually. “Well, I don’t know, to be honest. Are any of us really okay? That’s what I ask myself. All I can tell you, Pooh and Piglet, is that right now I feel really rather sad, and alone, and not much fun to be around at all. Which is why I haven’t bothered you. Because you wouldn’t want to waste your time hanging out with someone who is sad, and alone, and not much fun to be around at all, would you now.”
Pooh looked at Piglet, and Piglet looked at Pooh, and they both sat down, one on either side of Eeyore in his stick house.

Eeyore looked at them in surprise. “What are you doing?” “We’re sitting here with you,” said Pooh, “because we are your friends. And true friends don’t care if someone is feeling sad, or alone, or not much fun to be around at all. True friends are there for you anyway. And so here we are.”

“Oh,” said Eeyore. “Oh.” As the three of them sat there in silence, though Pooh and Piglet said nothing at all; somehow, almost imperceptibly, Eeyore started to feel a very tiny little bit better.[1]

Whether we admit it or not, we have all been in Eeyore’s place. And this exchange between friends shows how one’s sadness, aloneness or possibly loneliness can slowly diminish if we are patient with it.

Loneliness is a feeling resulting from a “lack of sympathetic or friendly relationships.” It happens when we believe that our current relationships are less satisfying than what we hope for, expect or feel like we deserve.[2] Because he is a fictional character, we don’t know if this is the exact reason why Eeyore was feeling this way. But however he was feeling, Pooh and Piglet were willing to be with him in the moment. And recognizing Eeyore’s feelings, while remaining present to them, is the first, and most important step to helping someone move past them.

As a chaplain in long term care, I have spent a lot of time with lonely people. Whether they are willing to express it or not, one can guess whether they may be lonely simply by determining what they are diagnosed with. This is because heart disease, hypotension or one of many addictions are often referred to as loneliness diseases, and the vast majority of residents are diagnosed with one or more of these diseases.

For those of us who are younger and want to avoid loneliness, we should pay as much attention to it as we would to our diet, exercise and the amount of sleep we get each night. But can we eliminate it entirely? Not really. It might help if we are a little bit more extroverted, but that might just be a band-aid solution to a deeper issue. This is because loneliness has been around us since the beginning of time.

At the beginning of the Torah, after God created Adam from the dust of the ground, he says “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”[3] When Adam sees and names Eve, what proceeds from his mouth is some of the most heartfelt poetry, rejoicing and praise the Torah has in its pages.

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”[4]

Here, God is not creating a wife for Adam, though this is what she is. He is not creating someone with whom Adam may “be fruitful and multiply” though they can make love to one another. God creates Eve to join Adam in his loneliness. He creates her to be a friend, because this is what Adam needed, and this is what friendship does.

As Dr. Keith Karren writes, friendships do not get better based on the number of friends we have. Instead, it is the closeness and quality of those relationships that determine our satisfaction. So whether we are married, single, living with someone, or by ourselves, it doesn’t matter. The issue is whether we have someone we can turn to for support. And the more people we have in our lives, the better.[5]

So just as Pooh and Piglet did with Eeyore, can we assume that our friends wouldn’t mind wasting their time hanging out with us, even though we may be sad, alone, and not much fun to be around at all. Because, whether we say anything at all, when we spend time with the lonely, our presence may ever so slightly impact them in a good way. And who knows? This might be exactly what our friends need to do for themselves as well.

[1] Retrieved from The Maddle Project, published December 15, 2018, on August 3, 2020 https://www.facebook.com/themaddieproject/photos/it-occurred-to-pooh-and-piglet-that-they-hadnt-heard-from-eeyore-for-several-day/1794783897315560/ Author unknown, but presumably A.A. Milne
[2] Karren, Keith J. 2010. Mind/Body Health: The Effects of Attitudes, Emotions and Relationships p. 260
[3] Genesis 2:18
[4] Genesis 2:23
[5] Karren 239

Miracle on Fox Street

David wrote this about 12 years ago on his blog spot. I (Paddy) read it again today and was taken by it. I have updated the content to reflect 2019 but this is how he saw his life when he was 28. And the picture is updated as well.

Everybody has a testimony. A testimony is a story about a test, which a person has encountered, and how they have dealt with that problem. In a court, the testimony of a witness is expressing what they saw take place. The judge then makes a decision based on their testimony whether a defendant is innocent or guilty of a crime.

For a Christian, their testimony is the telling of what God has done in a person’s life. Therefore, you could say, “I caught God doing this thing in a person’s life.” For the next few minutes, I want to tell you my testimony and what I experienced God doing.

My testimony begins at my birth, on November 27, 1978, when I was born with a life-threatening sickness called hydrocephalus, which means water on the brain. This meant that while still in the womb, my brain was severely compressed. After a CAT scan, the doctors determined that I had approximately two percent living brain tissue. They said I would be a person who would be unable to do anything for himself — a vegetable. This news came as a great shock to my parents, who were looking forward to starting their new family in their new home on Fox Street, West Vancouver.

When my Dad held me as a babe, he saw that I had a head the size of a two-year-old, and also as soft as a sponge, due to the amount of water that was in my skull. He sensed God tell him to name me David, (which means ‘beloved of God’), and Joseph, (which means ‘He shall add’). At this, Dad knew, first of all, that God loved me, and he believed that God would add brain cells to my tiny brain.

Mom and Dad then listened to the doctors as they told them why I was this way and how hydrocephalus takes place. “Before a baby is born,” they explained, “water travels up and down its spinal column several times per day. This fluid makes sure that the vital pathways in the body are clear, so the body’s essential organs may continue to work. What happened in David’s case is that somehow, the fluid was unable to make it all the way down his spinal column. Through time, water backed up his spinal column and filled his head, crushing his brain.”

The doctors continued. “In order for any child to live an ordinary life, they must be born with a functional brain. Brain cells do not multiply; the amount of brain tissue a child is born with is the most brain tissue that he/she will ever have.”

I was given no longer than one or two days to live. My parents were told by the doctors that surgery could insert a tube (a shunt) that would drain fluid from my head and take the pressure off of my brain. However, at that time, the procedure was fairly new, plus they could not be certain that it would work effectively. Even if it did work, they were unable to assure my parents that I would live very long.

But, my parents believed that Jesus was able to heal me with the hope that I might be able to live a fulfilled life.

I believe that when Jesus walked this earth two thousand years ago, there was little that impressed him more than faith shown by regular human beings around him. My parents read a story in the Bible from Luke 18 that encouraged them to pray until something happened. “Will not God make the things that are right come to His chosen people who cry day and night to Him? Will He wait a long time to help them? I tell you, He will be quick to help them, but when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:7,8. New Life Version)

As my story spread, people started to pray and have faith that Jesus would work a miracle in my life. They prayed that God would multiply my brain cells so that I would be able to live without machines. They prayed that just as Jesus made the lame walk, made the blind see and gave life to those who were dead, that Jesus would give me brain cells so I could become a normal human being.

After six months of prayer, the doctors were amazed to find that I had 25 percent brain tissue. My parents and many others continued to pray for more. Six months later, doctors again were amazed to find 50 percent brain tissue. By this point, I was a year old and was slowly learning how to do simple things. My parents and those who prayed for me were in awe at what God was doing, full of praise and thanksgiving to Him. As people continued to pray on my behalf, the Lord heard their prayers and continued to answer them. Prior to my second birthday, their prayers were answered yet again when doctors took a final CAT scan and found 98 percent brain tissue.

By this time, I was able to do most things that a two-year-old child could do. The only problem, which has persisted since my early days of life, is a severe visual impairment. Doctors have determined on many occasions that I have only two and a half percent vision in my left eye and three percent vision in my right. However, this was enough vision to get me through my first nine years of grade school.

In grade nine while I was thirteen, I suffered a stroke, which paralyzed the entire right side of my body. Before I came out of the coma, doctors in San Diego, California performed surgery to place a second shunt down the left side of my body. For years, I had had scars on my stomach which my parents termed scars of courage. By the time the surgery was done in 1991, I now had twice as many scars to boast about!

Soon after the surgery, I awoke from my coma and went back to school. Though the Special Education Assistants (S.E.A.) at my school now needed to help me overcome memory issues and balance problems in addition to my blindness, they helped me, and I graduated from high school with my classmates in 1996. That fall, I started a psychology degree at Trinity Western University and graduated with my second academic certificate in 2003. I then completed a certificate in Special Education and worked as a S.E.A. at a private Christian school in North Vancouver. S.E.A.’s had helped me successfully complete each level of grade school. It was my privilege to help others in the same ways that I had been helped many years ago. Not bad for someone who was supposed to die as an infant?

Though my parents originally gave me the credit for the courage I had to go through the many hours of surgery I endured, I give all the credit to Jesus Christ as he was the one who healed me. I hope my story will serve as a reminder both to me and anyone else, that God can and does heal us today. I know that he can work the same miracle in the lives of people anywhere. God is willing and able to make your life a testimony of his ability to transform a life. My life was turned around by prayer offered in simple faith. Your new life can begin the same way. All we must do is ask.

“Nobody did anything wrong,” said Jesus. “But this happened so that the works of God might be shown in this person’s life.” John 9:3

Addendum: David completed a Master’s degree in Spiritual Formation at Carey Theological College (UBC) and is now working on a chaplaincy degree at Vancouver General Hospital through Vancouver School of Theology (UBC). As well as the chaplaincy with seniors and the hospitalized, David provides spiritual direction (a kind of faith-based private practice) and is an active member of Artisan Church in East Vancouver.

 

Never-Ending Problems: Like Dandelions in the Grass

I like solving problems – always have. I like to think triangularly, question appreciatively, figure out what has not worked before and suggest something that I think is brilliant, create a plan for real change, and measure the anticipated success. I was taught all this in grad school, some of my female friends tell me that this is such a “man thing,” but I have lived this as far back as I can remember – when I was 8 years old I tried marriage counselling with my folks! I think I did pretty good.

Now John Gottman comes along as a marital researcher and says that about two-thirds of relational problems are perpetual, like dandelions in the grass. Some troubles are unsolvable he says, and lots of arguments never accomplish a thing other than rehearsing for the next squabble. Never-ending — sounds discouraging.

Carole and I have a bunch of unsolvable problems, mostly the same ones we had when we were first married. No matter what I do to “persuade” (coerce) her to do what I want (or she me), the problems keep flowering. The solvable ones delude us into thinking that we are pretty good at conflict solving, and it’s true that we’ve had some dramatic successes. It is the unsolvable ones that really bug me.

Here are some perpetual problems that you are probably familiar with:

Personality or “your way in the world”: Who is the most introverted in the dyad and who is the most extroverted? This probably doesn’t change much. Neither does the tension between the one that is most emotionally intuitive with the one that is perseveringly logical. And some people are emotional stuffers (always have been) while their devoted other is pretty much a feeling gusher (always has been).

History: You can’t change a person’s history. The times in which you were born, and the ways in which you were raised, or dynamics in your family of origin – this is set in history. The goodness of your connection has a lot to do with how winsomely you accept each other’s life before you met.

Sensitivities: How do you react to failure, or criticism, or loneliness, or unpredictability, or being excluded from a group? This is well-wired by the time a child becomes an early teen.

Some things change really slowly. Things like your view of what success or failure means in life, or what a worldview might be. Our relationship to money, emotions, work, conflict are hard to change, but change they do.

Habits change slowly as well. If you are an early-to-bed kind of person and you are married to a late night email addict, this too can change. Savers always seem to marry spenders – at least in my practice. Maybe that is why they come to therapy. Habits change – slowly.

I have discovered that unsolvable problems require different strategies than solvable ones. First off, you need to be willing to distinguish solvable from unsolvable problems. Make two lists of your problems. What can be negotiated (solvable) and what cannot (unsolvable)? What is most important to you (grade this 1-3)? What can you let go?

Secondly, focus 80% of your resources towards the good things that you already do well. Show a little “benevolent disinterest” (differentiation) towards the problem areas. It is not a moral failure to take a break from working on faults while you celebrate the good stuff you do now. Over-focusing on problems (many of which you can’t solve anyway) is a serious waste of good humour and friendly faith.

 

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