"Hey Robb, how are you doing?"
"Hi, Robb."
"Hi, did you have a good weekend?"
I spent 8 hours at work today. And in that time, 15 words were spoken to my face. All of them before 8:30 am. All of them in-passing pleasantries where an answer was not expected.
It is conceivably possible that I could have gone through this entire day with those 15 words being the only ones spoken to me. What if I were single and lived alone and didn't have a family who wanted to (or had to, I guess) speak to me? What if I didn't have a church meeting to go to tonight? What if my old friend didn't call to get caught up? I suppose there are people in that lonely situation, who go through an entire day with 15 words spoken to them. 15 words.
4 comments:
During grad school, I went through a phase (lasting several years actually) in which I idealized being solitary, avoided people as much as possible, and was perfectly content if I hadn't exchanged a word with anyone for up to a week or so.
I did eventually realize how silly I was being. The funny thing was that I had to re-learn how to speak coherently to people since my conversational style had degenerated into a veritable black hole of rapid, uninflected, stream-of-conciousness run-on sentences so dense that nothing, not even intelligibility could escape. I--ahem--have been known to relapse from time to time ;-) .
As you pointed out a while back, the lies we tell ourselves can be very odd and are very damaging, and we (myself especially so) should be extremely thankful that the Lord denies us some of the things we have convinced ourselves that we "desperately" need and want.
--Matthew
I talked to a friend about this exact thing just last night. She (our teammate and near-future flatmate) was saying how she lives in this booming city with nothing to do. She could get dressed up and go to dinner, or a movie, or shopping... and no one would even talk to her. She feels so lonely in the midst of so many. She has no community where she is at right now.
All that to say, it's amazing how much human interaction we all need. It's something that God put in us. It's that "community, relationship" thing you were talking about on Sunday!
Yeah, I've had some very lonely moments like that...it sucked...
I don't know what else to say except that little reminder, reminds me to contiously be placing efforts into building relationships
That's funny. I am single and live by myself. I have friends, but there have been Saturdays when I litteraly did not speak a word all day...excecpt maybe at the drive thru window. Funny. :)
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