The Possible Antidotes to Loneliness

In 2023, and earlier this year, Fr. Patrick “Paddy” Gilger, SJ, presented a lecture on loneliness in two venues—first at St. Paul’s College in Winnipeg, Canada, and then as part of an Ignatian Volunteer Corps event at Saint Ignatius College Prep in Chicago.

Through anecdotes, research findings and statistics, Fr. Gilger examines the ways society has affected the mindset of individuals through the decades, and why he believes we are in the place we are in today. Some of the statistics are mind-boggling. In recent years, 58% of Americans reported experiencing loneliness, with even higher rates among Millennials (71%) and Gen Z (79%).

Once the plight of older Americans, loneliness now plagues the young, so much so that in 2023 United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a health advisory titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” It’s not happening only here. In 2018, the United Kingdom appointed a minister of loneliness.

Father Gilger, a sociologist, suggests that throwing money and bureaucratic initiatives at the problem of loneliness is not the answer. Loneliness, he says, is a social problem, not an individual one. “I’m convinced that our loneliness epidemic is rooted in our shared history,” he says. “We feel lonely because we no longer feel we belong here. We lack a sense of destiny, of individual purpose and collective meaning. We are missing a story, a community, a set of common practices, and a shared understanding of the world in which we can find our own place.”

Relearning belonging is not an easy task. It will not happen quickly and it might be a concept too large for many of us to clearly imagine. “I grant, in many ways, that this story I’m telling is already implausible,” Fr. Gilger says to the St. Paul’s audience. “Well, you know, too bad—this is what you get when you have a Jesuit come talk to you.”

He stresses many times in the talk that individuals are lonely because society—the way we live now and have lived for decades— has made them so. “This post-everything life in which we live, has given us, I think, many wonderful freedoms.

But in gaining those, we’ve endured immense losses. Foremost among those losses, I think, is our lost capacity to live a common life. We’ve forgotten, or our society is failing to pass on, the habits of belonging. Can we relearn them?”

It’s a big question, the biggest of the entire presentation.

“If loneliness is not just a personal issue, if it’s not just your fault, but it’s ours, what good does it really do to teach you as individuals the skills to deal with this stuff?” Fr. Gilger asks. “That’s the real reason I am not coming here to you with a list of stuff to do—because you’re not responsible for this, which doesn’t mean we’re not responsible for this. You are responsible, I am responsible, as we, not as me.”

We have to begin not with the mind, but with the body, Fr. Gilger says, and he goes on to suggest works of mercy.

“If you are lonely, go take care of the poor,” he says. “Seriously. That’s the remedy. Put the old corporate practices of prayer in addition to this—processions, adoration, the liturgy of the hours, in which, for example, there is no liturgical constraint against the laity preaching. Why don’t we just do that, and have the laity preach? We can do shared rosaries again. We need common action that is delinked from right-wing ideology, that comes from our tradition. Desperately, we need it.”

One of Fr. Gilger’s more enlightening analogies borrows from the workings of a choir.

“The example I really want to give is song,” he says. “Songs balance constraint and individual repetition, and individual capacities, in a way that nothing else I could imagine does. Every choir member knows that songs not only constrain in their lyrics but also in tempo, in sequence, in volume. It is invariance of action that allows common action to take place.

“This repetition and this invariance, then, makes it possible for us to sing—and not just me. Plurality within constraint. There is a word, in fact, for the kind of internal difference produced by vocalists who bring all of this invariance—the same words, the same tempo, the same volume—but do so differently. The word is harmony. This is what we need. We need to reclaim and redevelop collective actions that look like harmonic practices. And like songs, they have to begin in the body.”

Besides some general suggestions on how people can begin to relearn belonging, Fr. Gilger offers no simple prescriptions. We acknowledge that there are no simple prescriptions, but we thought this would be a good opportunity to call attention to the many works our province offers across the Midwest for anyone struggling with loneliness or a lack of belonging—for anyone who wants to take the first step away from such feelings. Above is a list of our parishes, retreat houses (including treatment and support services) and social justice programs. To watch Fr. Gilger’s entire talk at St. Paul’s College, use the following link or the QR code above.

https://tinyurl.com/gilger