'Are You Lonesome Tonight?'

Tonight I want to talk about loneliness. I've been reading "Blue Shoe" by Anne Lamott, as I have reported, and Noah, a character in the book, mentions a book called "Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates that was written in 1961. I see a film was made of it in 2008 with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. That's great. They just jumped off the Titanic and into the 1950s for this one. I don't know if I want to see the film or not. I wonder why they took so long to make a film out of it. I don't want to see anything I can't see for free unless it'as at the B & B and I'm ready to fork out $20 to see a film and get popcorn and a drink. And, besides, that is not something I would go do by myself under ordinary circumstances. That is, I would have to have a very strong desire to see the particular film, and, honestly, that happens with less and less frequency as the years go by. The character named Noah in "Blue Shoe" tells the main character, Mattie, that it's his "favorite book," and that it's about loneliness. It's about a married couple trying to escape the boredom of suburbia, according to an online description of the film. I detect an underlying thread of assumption that it was boring to be married and have a family in the '50s. I know a lot of people in the '60s thought that way. "Blue Shoe" is a lot about loneliness as well. Mattie, the main character, is recently divorced with two small children. She spends a lot of time wishing she had a boyfriend, and I understand that is a common malady among people of all ages. I just read that the loneliest time for people is supposedly young adulthood, as in under 30. That might explain why so many marriages break up, because if people marry out of loneliness, they are likely more prone to marry for the wrong reasons and have a rude awakening. I have a book called "Loneliness" by Clark E. Moustakas. It also was written in 1961. Wow, 1961 must have been a big year for loneliness. It's still available on Thriftbooks. I may have got it at the bookstore where I went to college the first time. It still has the price tag sticker on the front. I was in junior high, I think, in 1961, and I don't remember loneliness being huge in those days, but I'm sure I experienced it sometimes, simply because we all do from time to time, but when people are still in school, at least three are always people around, and you will do all right if you have a good friend or two. It gets harder when you're out of school. I have not read all of the "Loneliness" book. I keep meaning to, but what I did read in it is very good. It contains personal accounts of loneless and even some passages from the Psalms in it. I hope to finally read it, and when I do, I'll report to you about it. What I remember is it was one of those books you could open anywhere and read something that would make you feel better. As for loneliness when I was a child, I do remember two times I experienced intense loneliness. One was when I was waiting for Dad to come home. Mom was waiting for him too. The second timeI experienced intense loneliness was when I was waiting for Mom to come home and I worried if she had gone to the liquor store. Moustakas was a psychologist who was born in 1923 and died in 2012. He was 89 when he died, the same age as my dad who was born in 1922 and died in 2011. He wrote another book called "Loneliness and Love" that came out in 1972 and several other books as well. In the book's preface, the author states that, "The basic message in this book is that lonelienss is a condition of human life, an experience of being human which enables the individual to sustain, extend, and deepen his humanity." I believe that is the message that I have held since I discovered this book many years ago. He urges us to recognize our loneliness and feel it "in every fibre of (our) being," this being preferable to trying to escape it. I think that is probably the best advice anyone could give on the way to deal with loneliness, because if we try to cure it with alcohol, drugs, sex or anything else, what I think happens is that all that accomplishes is we become addicted to those things and never really even become fully human. That is pretty powerful information. It's very likely that I have read the preface many times, because it's heavily underlined, which explains why I haven't read the entire book. The song "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" was written by Roy Turk and Lou Handman in 1926, but you may remember the rendition by Elvis Presley, that was released in--guess when--1960. Again, the 1960-1961 years must have been real big years for loneliness. I remember that rendition, and only recently learned how old it really was. I'm going to close because it is movie time for me, 10:00 p.m. This time used to be movie time for me on weekends when I still lived at home with my mother and my brother. I remember I used to make a pot of tea and get in front of the TV and watch a movie. Not sure I will do that tonight because I have found that "Blue Shoe" book that really is hard to put down, and I am really interested to see how it turns out. I hope that if anyone out there is lonely tonight that you will find some solace in my words or in someone's words or in your heart. The Moustakas book has references from the Book of Psalms, as well as, I think I saw one by Oliver Wendell Holmes and one by Kahlil Gibran, and there are others. I can't tell you about them, because, as I said, I only really read the preface several times, but all I know is that you are never really alone, even though loneliness may indeed by the human condition, common to all us humans. So, take heart and be of good cheer. You are loved, and that is a fact.