Do you Struggle with Loneliness

Ian PalmerFeb 25, 2025

Loneliness in the USA.
In the 1970s, Oral Roberts, the evangelist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, said loneliness was the biggest problem he had encountered on his many journeys across the US, and the world. In earlier years Oral Roberts traveled with a tent ministry when he preached and prayed healing for long lines of people.

Fifty years later, the departing Surgeon-General of the US, Dr Vivek Murthy, said he was also concerned about this. Speaking about health and the role of community, he said in Time Magazine, Feb 10, 2025, that there are three red flags in the US:
• One third of adults and half of young people suffer from loneliness.
• More than half of young adults said they felt either low or no sense of meaning and purpose.
• People’s participation in both formal and informal service remains low.

Does loneliness affect the public?
According to the Surgeon-General, there are both mental and physical effects. When people struggle with loneliness and isolation, it impacts their engagement and productivity at work. And also how kids do in school. At another level, when community is weak, we are more easily polarized, divided, and turned against each other (and this is an epidemic in the US right now).

Interacting with others.

When you are lonely, you feel down, and less likely to interact with community. But this is exactly what you need to do. Speaking personally, this is one reason I play pickleball, which I am fortunate I can still do despite my age. Its like miniature tennis and I run around a lot – its a great workout. I’ve always been competitive, and I love to win.

But more than this, pickleball is a golden opportunity to socialize. I mix and play and talk and laugh with folks who are my age, and some who are half my age. It’s a highlight of my week.

One pickleball guy told me about a museum out of Rapid City, South Dakota that was all about wooly mammoths who around 150,000 years ago rumbled over the prairie before the last ice age. He said there are almost complete skeletons standing and lying where they had died.

Six months later I was in the area and dropped by the museum. It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen – all because I stopped to chat with a fellow pickle-baller that I didn’t even know very well.

What the Surgeon-General recommended.
First, create a community. For example, join a dance club. I’ve never met a woman who didn’t love to dance. So when I moved to Albuquerque, I joined the Albuquerque Dance Club soon afterwards. They do Country & Western, Ballroom, western Swing, and Latin.

Just a couple weeks ago, I went to a mixer dance on Valentine’s Day and it was a wonderful evening. Hard to struggle with loneliness amongst 200 elderly folks sharing the dance floor.

Second, invest in others and invest in a community. If I don’t have children, I won’t go out and advocate for safer schools. If I’m not looking after an aging parent, I won’t be concerned about safe home care. But if I’m connected to neighbors, friends, and family, then their concerns become my concerns, and I’ll be more willing to pitch in and help.

The end result? If we do what the Surgeon-General suggests, he says we will be creating communities we all deeply need in our lives, which will ultimately help us resolve the loneliness and find the fulfilment we are searching for.

In 2019, Sanjay Gupta, a brain surgeon, created an HBO special video called One Nation Under Stress. He had traveled across the country for two years investigating why so many people overdosed or committed suicide. He found that too many people suffered toxic stress that fueled unimaginable depression. His conclusion: “…it became clear to me that we all need to do a better job taking care of each other.”

Finally, a dose of practical advice. A friend told me if you feel lonely, think about interacting with someone else. Someone who has a need that you know about. Call them. Suggest you get together.

I wrote a few years ago about the feeling of uselessness and depression that can come with age above 70. A list of things older folks can do to offset depression is provided here.

My friend went on to say Job’s life in the Bible turned around when he prayed for his friends, even though they gave him poor advice. In Coleridge’s famous poem, the life of the Ancient Mariner started to turn when, despite his torment, he prayed for the water snakes. See quote below.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Beyond the shadow of the ship,
I watched the water-snakes:
They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship
I watched their rich attire:
Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware:
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.