What to Do about Being Lonely?

So Steve writes, hello, as a single senior, I wake up with lonely feelings sometimes when I don't have a plan for the day. What would be a mindfulness way to respond? Thank you so much. So I'll give you the headline, Steve, which is to cultivate the qualities of heartfelt presence. So think about those two words, presence and heartfelt. So understandably, we're social Primates, we tend to mate. We form pair bonds. Getting older and not having a partner, even if there are aspects of that that we enjoy, can certainly stir up other feelings. The Buddhas, as you know, made this wonderful distinction between the first dart and the second dart. In other words, the distinction between, understandably, primary forms of discomfort. In this life, physical and emotional. So waking up with loneliness is very understandable. And it's also understandable that when daily activities and the busyness of the mind and... Our preoccupations of various kinds are not so present than what they've kept at bay or understandably what has had to move to the background can surge forward, like feelings of loneliness. As I'm sure you know, Steve, loneliness is distinct from the enjoyment of solitude. I enjoy solitude a lot. I don't like feeling lonely. And that's a certainly common experience for people. So what to do about it, right? What would be a mindful way to respond, as Steve asks? Certainly, awareness is mindful. Mindfulness, arguably, is sustained present moment awareness. That's it. That's all it is. Not being sucked into the future or the past, not being discombobulated or distracted, not being kind of fragmented internally. Present moment awareness of the outer and the inner world, second after second, breath after breath. It's the continuity of that steadiness of mind, that continuity of present moment awareness. That's the challenge. And that's where mindfulness training and the preeminent mindfulness training is, of course, meditation. That's where mindfulness training comes in. So what to do about it? A mindful way to respond would be to start by being with the feelings of loneliness What does it actually mean to be lonely? What does it feel like? And here it's so helpful to keep coming back to the Buddha's admonition to face and accept and cope as best you can with the primary first darts of life, while trying to disrupt as much as possible the secondary cascade of the darts we throw ourselves. And so with this mindfulness, with this self-awareness of loneliness, you would try to come close to the primary sense of it. Body sensations, rather than getting lost in rumination about it. Body sensations, basic emotion, you know, fundamental beliefs, kind of seed beliefs, like I will always be alone, or this is awful, or... I'm alone because I did something bad or I am bad, you know, beliefs like that, trying to get down to the basics if they're there, and also desires. What are the fundamental desires or motivations that are related to this? These qualities of body sensations, emotions, cognitions, and desires, these aspects, are really four central components of experience. We might argue that there are other components as well, or blends, fine, but just nail down these four. You know, what's it feel like in your body? What's it feel like emotionally? What are your thoughts about it? Beliefs, perspectives, frames of reference, even nonverbal imagery. And what are the desires that are related to it? The aims, the values, the longings, the clingings, the cravings. The drivenness, the pushing away, the grabbing toward, what are the desires associated with this experience? That unpacking. is quintessential mindfulness and can be really helpful because what happens then is you start to, as you do that mindful unpacking, you start to fully experience the experience. The unpacking is really valuable because as you unpack the experience mindfully of loneliness, it opens it up, it starts to flow, and as it flows, it releases, it eases, it softens. The parts of it become sort of more apparent. And less binding, less implicating, less burdensome. This is the value as well of vipassana, insight, in which we, as we unpack our experience and disentangle its threads from what seems like a very knotted up, congealed and solid experience, it is revealed to be much more like a cloud or a stream rather than some kind of solid stuck, you know. And as we recognize its emptiness of solidity, its emptiness of absolute existence or emptiness of foreverness, nothing is forever, as it were, no experience lasts forever, then it's not so burdensome. And we start seeing its nature. As we see, the nature of all experiences is made of parts that are connected and changing, which eases up. So that would certainly be the application of a lot of mindfulness to experiences of loneliness. And then, of course, there's more to practice than mindfulness. It's an eightfold path, not a onefold path. And so we might also bring to bear, you know, wise intentions of different kinds, such as intentions broadly to be kind to beings, including the one who wears your name tag. So what would it be like to kind of back your play? And to do what you can in the real world, to bring more people into your life or more times with people in your life where there's a sense of connection and to develop not just more opportunities to receive caring and kindness and inclusion and empathy and prizing and even love, not just encourage that to occur more in your field and come your way more. In addition to that, exploring ways to offer it more and more of yourself, perhaps forms of service with others, perhaps joining with others, doing things, getting out in the world. I'm by nature, I would say a little shy, a little socially anxious underneath it all. And I find for myself, stepping into settings that kind of make me nervous, if I just remind myself that all I need to do is listen. Okay, I know how to listen. I joke sometimes that, you know, that I could be one of those people sitting on the street, we'll listen for food or something, you know. So that's a low bar, just being someone who is not trying to take, but is actually prepared to give a fullness of attention. And to give a blessing disposition, as a teacher of mine once put it a long time ago, to give, as Carl Rogers put it, great therapist, unconditional positive regard. That's kind of a low bar, you know, and maybe I'll just finish by making the point that sometimes in those, understandably, because we're social primates, we're very attentive to hierarchy, and that's understandable. A friend of mine asked me once how I felt going into a conference kind of setting where there were a bunch of famous teachers. It was residential. We were going to be in a conference center for a few days and running programs. And I had a small part of the larger program. And he said, Rick, how are you going to tolerate that? You know, being around all those really super famous, impressive people, And I looked into it and I observed, I shared with him the fact that what I've observed Is that in those environments, as the hours pass and even the days pass, the person who is least trying to be impressive comes to be regarded as the most impressive of all.