To Shut Each Other Out…

From a dramatic play we cite two sentences spoken between two people who found themselves drawn far apart, hardly aware that they had done so until the distance between them was wide and deep. “It is so easy,” one of them said, “to miss the moment when the most important thing in life changes.”¹ There are many kinds of loneliness, and the most acute kind may not be physical, but loneliness of heart⎯the loneliness of being with people whose thoughts and purposes are not as ours, the loneliness of being with people very impersonally, the loneliness even that comes in a crowd, or the deeper loneliness of being left out of someone’s life. It is easy for people to pull apart, to become educated in different directions, to become acquainted in different directions, to acquire different friends, different activities, different interests, which of themselves are not necessarily separating, so long as there is not an ignoring of the causes and symptoms of separation. And as to husbands and wives: there is necessarily a division of labor and responsibility. It isn’t possible, always, from them to enter into all of each others’ activities, always to be professionally of even socially engaged in the same circle, but they can be interest3ed, understanding and informed, and have a common purpose, and share confidences, and thus keep close. It is when we begin to shut each other out of our thoughts and purposes that the dangerous kind of separation sets in. This suggests the sharing of confidence and communication between husbands and wives⎯a confiding closeness to those who mean the most. A man is most vulnerable⎯a woman, a boy, a girl⎯when he shuts himself away from those to whom he should keep closest. Let it never be said of loved ones: “It is lonely to be together.” Let us never blindly miss the moment when the most important thing in life could change if we were not careful and considerate and sensitive to it.