WHO WILL NOTICE WHEN YOU DIE?

Excerpted from the book 'Escape Routes' by J.C. Arnold

Three weeks before Christmas 1993, Wolfgang Dircks died while watching television. Neighbors in his Berlin apartment complex hardly noticed the absence of the 43-year-old. His rent continued to be paid automatically out of his bank account. Five years later, the money ran out, and the landlord entered Dircks's apartment to inquire. He found Dircks's remains still in front of the tube. The TV guide on his lap was open to December 3, the presumed day of his death. Although the television set had burnt out, the lights on Dircks's Christmas tree were still twinkling away.

It's a bizarre story, but it shouldn't surprise us. Every year thousands of people are found accidentally days or weeks after their solitary deaths in the affluent cities and suburbs of the Western world. If a person can die in such isolation that his neighbours never notice, how lonely was he when alive?

Forget about the Information Age: we live in the age of loneliness. In a world where marriage rates are dwindling, middle age is synonymous with divorce, and old age means a nursing home, people are bound to be very lonely. How many of our neighbors or colleagues do we really know as friends? How often do we turn on the television because we lack companionship?

It's true that in the last few years new kinds of community have arisen which we ought to take note of. One is the grassroots movement of environmental, human rights, and labor groups that converged on Seattle in 1999 and Quebec in 2001 to demonstrate against the undemocratic globalization agreements known as "free trade." A woman who helped organize for the Seattle protests told me:

"The feeling of solidarity and community among us was incredible. Even though most of us were strangers, we cared and looked out for one another. Our aim was a non-violent one, putting into practice the teachings of Gandhi and King." When thousands of people from all walks of life come together to share a vision after years of creative networking, I feel great hope for the future. Still, such hopeful signs are far too rare to solve the epidemic of loneliness that is the curse of our society today.

Surely there must be more to our cravings than can be answered by the simple presence of others around us--who hasn't felt lonely in the middle of a crowd? Kierkegaard, by way of example, writes in his Journal that though he was often the life and soul of a party, he was desperate underneath: "Wit poured from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me. But I went away...and wanted to shoot myself."

Such desperation is a common result of alienation from our true selves. If it seems an exaggeration, recall your own adolescence. How often were you insecure or lonely, unable to measure up to all those people who seemed to have everything - people who were smart, fit, and popular? And even if you were well-liked, what about your hypocrisy, your deceit, your guilt? Who hasn't known the weight of these things? Multiply self-contempt a million times, and you have the widespread alienation that marks society today. What else is it that stops strangers from acknowledging each other in the street, that breeds gossip, that keeps co-workers aloof? What else is it that destroys the deepest friendships, that divides the most closely knit families and makes the happiest marriages grow cold? We may justify the walls we throw up as safeguards against being used or mistreated. But do they really protect us? If anything, they destroy us by keeping us separated from others. They result in the attitude summed up by Jean Paul Sartre, who said that "hell is other people." Dostoyevsky half-jokingly said that though he loved humanity, he couldn't stand individuals. All too often, our actions unwittingly mirror exactly that view. How many of us really love our neighbor, rather than merely coexist? How often do we pass someone with a smile on our face, but a grudge underneath--or at least a quiet prayer that if he stops to talk, he won't go on too long? And doesn't this lack of love contribute to alienation on a broader social level? How far we have fallen from our real destiny! If only we were able to break down a few of the barriers that separate us, we might not resign ourselves so quickly to the idea that they are an unavoidable fact of life, but open our hearts to the richness that human experience affords-both in the sheer miracle of our individual existence, and in the joy of meaningful interaction with others.

Excerpted from the book 'Escape Routes' by J.C. Arnold Read it free by email at Home Site Author Bio: An outspoken social critic and award-winning author, Johann Christoph Arnold's books have sold over 300,000 copies in English and have been translated into 18 foreign languages.

J.C. Arnold is the author of ten books and a pastor in the Bruderhof Communities.

Johann Christoph Arnold

Johann Christoph Arnold's Web Site

Bruderhof Communities

Return to Table of Contents