Existential Loneliness: A Call to Care

Wholeness and broken-ness are not two separate things... and life is not just a process of becoming whole. Our truest wholeness begins when we are most broken.... The stars shine the brightest when the midnight sky is the darkest. Until we embrace this loneliness, and accept it as an essential aspect of existence... we continue to be separated from ourselves... fighting and grasping after a perfect unity -- as Tillich states, " the self separated from the self is the greatest separation there is." Loneliness is a wake up call to self; It need not lead to the experience of isolation, depression, mental illness, or suicide. The acceptance of our loneliness is an acceptance of life itself... to the impermanence of all things, and the decision to find contentment in circumstance. In loneliness we learn to BE. Heidegger would say that this BE-ING is a means to care. As my partner said.... Lonely people caring for other lonely people. So somewhere in this brokeness we find wholeness...we find resolve in connecting to the human condition. In this third space. between the the single, lonely I, and the ecological whole of the Universe, we find our place, lonely thought it is.