This loneliness produces boredom, lack of appetite, pessimistic bitterness, a constant looking to the future and doing nothing today, dissatisfaction, a desire to escape, cowardice. These conditions, collectively referred to by the ascetic literature as accidia, mercilessly plague many, including the careless monastic.

Antiochos, who lived in the seventh century, is even more vivid and precise in his definition of accidia:

“This condition brings you anxiety, dislike for the place where you are living, but also for your brothers and for every activity. There is even a dislike for Sacred Scripture, with constant yawning and sleepiness. Moreover, this condition keeps you in a state of hunger and nervousness, wondering when the next meal will come. And when you decide to pick up a book to read a little, you immediately put it down. You begin to scratch yourself and to look out of the windows. Again you begin to read a little, and then you count the number of pages and look at the titles of the chapters. Finally, you give up on the book and go to sleep, and as soon as you have slept a little you find it necessary to get up again. And all of these things you are doing just to pass the time.”

St. John of Damascus says that this struggle is very heavy and very difficult for monks.

St. Theodore of Studion says that the passion of accidia can send you directly to the depths of Hades.

The Supreme Loneliness of Believers Today
The Community of the Desert and the Loneliness of the Cities
Monk Moses the Athonite

4. Start with one solitary person. Find one person who needs you today. Start there. Significance may be as inexpensive as one cup of coffee or as simple as one heartfelt question. If you are unsure where to start, try this, “No, how are you really doing?”

Stop Chasing Success. Seek Significance.

“I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone.”

— Marian Keyes, Anybody Out There

I want to reflect on this lonely place in our lives.  Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our lives are in danger.  Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.  Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our actions quickly become empty gestures.

—Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Why is it that we do not join the lonely eater in the dining hall but look for those we know so well?

—Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

One of my very favorite songs is a rather obscure Beatles song called Things We Said Today. It is a dark and brooding, quite out of place at a time when the Beatles albums were still almost entirely saccharine teenage love songs.

It tells the story of a couple who are constantly too busy to make dedicated, quality time for each other. In a moment of clarity, the narrator realizes that one day he will look upon the mundane, everyday conversations the two shared as the priceless moments they really were.

Someday when I’m lonely,

Wishing you weren’t so far away,

Then I will remember

Things we said today

Things We Said Today

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in … but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre