Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice
in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream,
Waits at the window, wearing the face
that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie, writing the words
of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks
in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby, died in the church
and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt
from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong? Eleanor Rigby, Song by The Beatles
“I am doing the thing that lonely people do, which is fine-tuning my loneliness hierarchy. Which is lonelier…to be single and lonely, or lonely within a dead relationship? Is it totally pathetic to be single and lonely and be jealous of someone lonely inside a dead relationship?...In the same way people get flashes of light before a killer migraine, I have the aura the precedes a loneliness blizzard, those sweeps of loneliness that feel not just emotional but medical. Whenever I sense a blizzard about to attack, I have a few tactics I immediately employ that drain it of potency…I go to a coffee place. The 1990’s were great because suddenly lonely people had a place where they could all be lonely together while pretending to be fine on the outside.” Eleanor Rigby, novel by Douglas Coupland
Since when has Eleanor Rigby been the epitome, the patron saint of our existence? Is loneliness the overarching theme of our generation? Or have we always suspected that this is the primal condition of our life – that we are and always have been, and irrevocably lonely – that inspite of the crowd and the lack of breathing room, and streets full of people, we are prophylactically isolated. If this is so, then in essence it is as if we have not left the embryonic womb where we have first begun to exist – although the umbilical cord attaches us to our mothers, it is a temporary connection that cannot deny nor assuage the loneliness, separation and alienation that is our fundamental inheritance.
We are the lonely people – men and women carrying wound from where we have been cut-off, cast adrift, bereft of real relations. For a separation did occur. The essential loneliness we all feel is the eventual result of a break, a rift from a basic, indispensable relationship, and we have been reduced into empty shells, hollow people that need that vital connection. In each one of us lies a longing, a desire to belong, a desire to be united to that place or to that Someone we have been cut off from. And this is hell. It is not merely emotional, as Liz Dunn, the protagonist of Coupland’s novel would describe our condition, but something beyond that, something ingrained in us, something basic.
There is no magic that can cure us of this condition – this loneliness that has plagued us for the longest time. We throw ourselves into desperate relationships after another. We willingly submit ourselves into the humiliation of being attached to somebody, to anybody just so we feel reined in, involved, belonging to something, to someone. We find in our families, our loved ones, our friends temporary reprieve, because no matter how much we love them, and how much they love us, we are essentially, tragically, unavoidably alone. We can despair and in mawkish surrender, submit to the haze of this blizzard of loneliness and continue to lead lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau would put it – surrender to the slow, agonizing death of our solitary and sad existence. Or we can hope for a better world – believe in a future of glorious reunion.
“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now, not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body…” Romans 8:22-23
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice
in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream,
Waits at the window, wearing the face
that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Father McKenzie, writing the words
of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working, darning his socks
in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby, died in the church
and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie, wiping the dirt
from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong? Eleanor Rigby, Song by The Beatles
“I am doing the thing that lonely people do, which is fine-tuning my loneliness hierarchy. Which is lonelier…to be single and lonely, or lonely within a dead relationship? Is it totally pathetic to be single and lonely and be jealous of someone lonely inside a dead relationship?...In the same way people get flashes of light before a killer migraine, I have the aura the precedes a loneliness blizzard, those sweeps of loneliness that feel not just emotional but medical. Whenever I sense a blizzard about to attack, I have a few tactics I immediately employ that drain it of potency…I go to a coffee place. The 1990’s were great because suddenly lonely people had a place where they could all be lonely together while pretending to be fine on the outside.” Eleanor Rigby, novel by Douglas Coupland
Since when has Eleanor Rigby been the epitome, the patron saint of our existence? Is loneliness the overarching theme of our generation? Or have we always suspected that this is the primal condition of our life – that we are and always have been, and irrevocably lonely – that inspite of the crowd and the lack of breathing room, and streets full of people, we are prophylactically isolated. If this is so, then in essence it is as if we have not left the embryonic womb where we have first begun to exist – although the umbilical cord attaches us to our mothers, it is a temporary connection that cannot deny nor assuage the loneliness, separation and alienation that is our fundamental inheritance.
We are the lonely people – men and women carrying wound from where we have been cut-off, cast adrift, bereft of real relations. For a separation did occur. The essential loneliness we all feel is the eventual result of a break, a rift from a basic, indispensable relationship, and we have been reduced into empty shells, hollow people that need that vital connection. In each one of us lies a longing, a desire to belong, a desire to be united to that place or to that Someone we have been cut off from. And this is hell. It is not merely emotional, as Liz Dunn, the protagonist of Coupland’s novel would describe our condition, but something beyond that, something ingrained in us, something basic.
There is no magic that can cure us of this condition – this loneliness that has plagued us for the longest time. We throw ourselves into desperate relationships after another. We willingly submit ourselves into the humiliation of being attached to somebody, to anybody just so we feel reined in, involved, belonging to something, to someone. We find in our families, our loved ones, our friends temporary reprieve, because no matter how much we love them, and how much they love us, we are essentially, tragically, unavoidably alone. We can despair and in mawkish surrender, submit to the haze of this blizzard of loneliness and continue to lead lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau would put it – surrender to the slow, agonizing death of our solitary and sad existence. Or we can hope for a better world – believe in a future of glorious reunion.
“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now, not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body…” Romans 8:22-23
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