The opposite of loneliness

In 2013 I sold everything I had except for what would fit into a hockey bag and bought a one-way ticket to London, England. I thought to myself, “I know the language and I’ve lived in London before. I’ll be totally fine.”

I quickly realized that my memories of ‘living in London’, were dramatically exaggerated. I had done a discipleship training school with Soul Survivor in Watford which some would say is technically greater London. I don’t think anyone who lives there tells people they live in London though. Watford Junction Station is technically connected to the tubes but it’s literally the last stop at the end of an overground line out in zone 9. In 2001 when I did their school I paid them up front for my 5 months of room and board. Someone from the church picked me up from the airport and when it was time for me to go back to Canada, someone drove me back to the airport. 24 of us lived in a house where our meals were provided by a staff cook named Stella. So, when I arrived in Shoreditch with nowhere to live and not enough money, my past history with London wasn’t much help.

It’s an oddly vulnerable thing, knowing nobody. London is hailed as being one of the loneliest cities on the planet. I stayed at a hostel for the first 3 weeks I was there. It was kind of like a holiday at first. I found traveling Aussies whose names I don’t remember to go out for pints with. I wouldn’t call them friends though. I started my job at Starbucks which I took so that when I was looking for apartments I wouldn’t have to tell people I was both homeless and unemployed. My colleagues and I didn’t have much in common. I distinctly remember waking up at 3:30am for my first opening shift. I remember waiting for the bus in the crisp spring morning air, thinking to myself that this wasn’t a permanent situation and that the whole point of my coming to London was to bring about major change in my life. Buy the ticket, take the ride, I told myself.

I eventually found a flat with 3 housemates who I had nothing in common with. None of us liked each other much. I purposely stayed out of the house as much as possible. I remember getting my first pay from Starbucks. It was £600. I breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t occur to me that different countries might have different pay cycles. My colleague handed me the cheque and I said, “Oh cool. Ok so we’ll get paid again in two weeks right? I can live off this.”

“No that’s for the month.”

My heart sank. I calculated my expenses. £415 for rent. £80 for bus pass. £15 for phone. £90 left for my portion of the gas bill and for food. There were a couple of nights there where I ended up eating two £1 bags of Doritos for dinner. Things were bleak.

I tracked down some people I knew from Soul Survivor back in the day and they invited me to their church: King’s Cross Church which met in the old Ethiopian church on Pentonville road. I had been away from church community for ten years. I had indeed come to London intending to live differently and to get back to church and God but the first day I showed up at KXC I was in rough shape. I didn’t think Christians would want to be friends with me. It had been several weeks since I’d experienced what it felt like for someone to be happy to see me. I sat in the back row and waited for them to say something that would be offensive enough for me to just bail and never come back. That didn’t happen. I was surprised to hear someone with a mic say, “If it’s your first time here, massive welcome. After the service we all go down the pub and if it’s your first time coming with us, your first drink is on us.” So I went and met a bunch of people at the pub that night. It was the most social activity I’d had in weeks and weeks. I went again the next Sunday.

After a couple of months of this I started feeling like the pub after church was the highlight of my week. People were starting to become familiar with me and I with them. But nobody really felt like my real friend yet. I didn’t really know how to connect with people. I needed community but was unclear on why it didn’t seem to be happening. Then one day one of my friends from Toronto posted a Bell Hooks quote that radically shifted my perspective on what community is:

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

I had been going to the pub every Sunday and sharing how hard my life was in an attempt to be open and honest. I hadn’t realized that in every conversation, I was soliciting some kind of sympathy or empathy response. I was taking people’s emotional energy. Perhaps the reason people weren’t naturally connecting to me was that they were being left tired out by our interactions. I decided I’d change that.

I started intentionally going after consciously not taking from people in social interactions with them and instead, began to make sure I was giving them something every time. When I would invite people to do something with me, I would have made a plan to do something and I was inviting them into my already made plan. The onus wasn’t ever on them to figure out what we should do. It was like flicking a light switch for my social life. I started getting invited to things! I joined a team at church that arrived early to help set everything up for the service. I made more friends. I joined a connect group (which KXC calls Hubs because they’re cool) and made more friends. I started attending songwriting nights. I made more friends. I volunteered to help with the Alpha Course. I made more friends. This one singular concept had revolutionized my social life. A couple of months later I literally had plans every day through the month of December. I remember meeting a girl who wanted to go on a date with me but I was booked solid for the next 6 weeks. I was the coolest I’d ever been. So let’s boil this down into some spiritual talk since that’s what I do these days.

There is a spiritual entity called Loneliness whose goal is to set itself up against the knowledge of God in humanity. It does this primarily through perverting people’s understanding of community. Perversion just means it’s the wrong version. If you think of your need for community as a water faucet, loneliness would be like a funnel with a hose that just sprays the water all over the floor. What a bastard.

The core lie used by Loneliness is that community is something everyone except you is receiving from everyone else. Loneliness has friends called Self-Righteousness, Shame and Comparison who whisper things like, “They give community to everyone else but not me.”, or, “I’ve done all the right things for people to want to connect to me but they just choose not to because either something is wrong with them or something must be wrong with me.” As these narratives get built within a person through believing them, strongholds begin to form and the person finds themselves actually acting in ways that repel people through pre-rejection or by becoming over bearing. The need for community that is not being met intensifies and soon they’re sucking all the energy out of every room they enter. Internally their indictment of mankind grows. How dare they not give me community…

So, here’s the key to that prison: The nature of community is that it cannot be received. It can only be given.

Am I saying that in healthy community you don’t receive anything? Not at all. I am saying though that healthy community is an environment where people are mutually investing in the relationships in positive ways, bringing energy to each other all the time. It’s like planting a field and watering it and watering it and watering it. Then one day there’s a harvest and that harvest is deep interconnectivity. Obviously healthy community is more complex than only what I’ve written here but this post isn’t about vulnerability, acceptance, confrontation and celebration. This post is the key out of loneliness!

So why did I title it the opposite of loneliness then? Because there’s a quick way to help you identify if you’re partnering with loneliness!

If you believe the opposite of loneliness is popularity, that’s actually the loneliness narrative.

The opposite of loneliness isn’t popularity. It’s hospitality.

So go be a friend to some people! Plant some community!

Bless you!

If you want more, click here to check out my YouTube channel where I talk about things like this every week!