The loss of belonging in modern life
We seem to live in an age of metaphorical homelessness, which is perhaps reflected most deeply in its non-metaphorical, physical homelessness which is ballooning in our cities.
I am not an expert in the field of the real-world tragic phenomenon of homelessness, but I do know some people who are. From their experience, the main issue seems not to be a lack of funds or homes proper, which the government has repeatedly tried to provide for, but rather the underlying hopelessness and disconnection that leads someone down a road where homelessness becomes their reality and eventually even, in some ways, their preferred life, due to the despair that can easily set in. Ultimately, we aren’t really dealing with a physical homelessness primarily so much as a spiritual, emotional, and mental homelessness which leads to the physical reality—an experience many of us in the flashy global world we find ourselves are also experiencing.
While most of us will not end up on the streets as a result of our existential loneliness, we will suffer greatly from it. Some of this sense of homelessness of the heart is purely part of the human condition; all of us sense we are created for something beyond what we see, and the Christian believes that that “something beyond” is eternal life, and one that can be without any of the suffering we find here.
But there is something especially strong in our modern climate that lends itself to this experience being both more common and much deeper. So many people feel that they have lost their moorings and a sense of belonging; particularly in the modern West, none of us seem to have an intuitive sense of being truly from somewhere and having an identity within a broader terrain.
Historically, people did not move around like we do now. They had an identity attached to a real geographical place and a people or small nation they could see themselves in.
In a real way, this spiritual and emotional displacement is simply downstream of a commonly chosen (and in some cases, not chosen) kind of physical displacement. The lack of physical rootedness leads us a sense of an alien interior terrain.
Living far from home and community
I am no exception. I was raised in Saskatchewan, and have spent my entire life barely living there, finding my way first to other Canadian locales, and then overseas to Austria and the United Kingdom for studies and my time with the record label, and eventually meandering down to my beloved Los Angeles after cruising across the entirety of Canada’s Highway 1 on tour.
I have loved my life, and in general, I’m someone who can get around quite easily. I’ve always sincerely liked people, and this seems to be the main key to easily forming meaningful relationships. I’ve also always been involved in Church communities, and while these are never perfect, they do offer a profound head start on friendships: people are open-hearted and generous, and there are many ways to be involved and find a place to be if you are flexible enough to sincerely enjoy it.
While I also miss so much of my home in Saskatchewan and am regularly grateful for how it unequivocally and irrevocably formed me as both an artist and a person, it feels more truly to me that I belong where I am now.
And yet, one never really shakes the kind of existential suspension while living in a large city without family.
Some people stay put where they are planted, of course. This lends itself to a deeper sense of belonging, even just from the familiarity of a place and the closer-to-constancy reality of the people that inhabit it. This is especially true of smaller places. And being able to form a healthy marriage and family unit certainly offers a proposed better way, but even this comes with its many struggles as we all lift off gradually but inexorably from the simple community connectedness that built most of the world we arrived in.
Even when we don’t leave our place and people, in a strange way, it seems to leave us.
Yeats’ The Second Coming comes to mind: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…”
Screens, cities, and the erosion of ordinary connection
Something more universal has transpired such that while it may be easier in a place like that, especially with one’s own family, the isolation is common everywhere. Couples without other couples, kids with no one to play with, relatives far away due to us or them, moms without company down the block to call on, the elderly without someone to have a coffee with at an often non-existent local diner. Often, too (and not unrelated) the streets are empty, barren, and often resultingly less safe. We don’t have robust “third places” and we also have little connection in our day-to-day life.
I’m not going to pretend I have it all figured out. Modern life is complicated.
A lot of this is not exactly measurable, but its effects can be seen everywhere. In proportion to how much time people spend on screens, they are less inclined to go and seek relationships elsewhere. This phenomenon has found its perhaps fullest realization in the all-encompassing phone reality that is so normative, but it began even with the advent of the TV and evenings glazed over in front of its flickering lights and images of fantasy.
The end result is that fewer people plan get-togethers, and fewer people enthusiastically partake. We find enough of a daily, momentary distraction that seems to cauterize the wound of aching for company, enough to get us through to the next day, and we simply don’t make an effort for more. In reality, we rarely even allow ourselves enough time to become cognizant that we could consider choosing otherwise. There is no proper boredom to inspire creativity, even the simple creativity of wondering what might be something fun to do with a friend.
There is also substantially less daily interaction in the ways we have structured our lives; some people rarely even speak to the grocery or restaurant clerk anymore with the proliferation of delivery apps and self-checkout. The organic formation of relationships is mostly gone. These were underestimated as a load-bearing reality. They lead to a loss of the common loneliness in its common, simple cadence throughout the week, as well in those daily touch points developing into the people we can call upon in both our joys and sorrows. Our most significant relationships are often formed through these simple cadences, and we have largely lost them.
(Perhaps it’s part of why dating has become so difficult as well: so few organic, simple ways to be interacting and building up to a first date.)
Of course, the effect can be much more marked in a large city, where so many have felt compelled to move due to the idealization of larger centers as well as the very practical reality of common necessity.
Rebuilding a sense of home and belonging
As someone still largely on my own, I often find myself in a conundrum which helps me realize that the way we have designed our cities does not lend itself to truly human, healthy engagement.
While I have so many people who love me and would gladly make time for me, it is not always feasible from a time and energy perspective to carve out a deliberate time to see them. Most of us are busy and just need gentle, organic touchpoints where we see people and remember we are in a broader context—that there are people who know us, would notice if we were gone, and would grieve us if we died.
So, in a real way, so many people feel emotionally and spiritually homeless because the modern world has rarely been designed to facilitate the opposite. On top of this, we are all increasingly more tied to electronic, abstract life which is so difficult to tear ourselves away from. On top of this, that same abstract world has increasingly radicalized all of us in a variety of intense directions which only rarely dominated our social conversations in the past, making us much more inclined to seek out bespoke agreeing groups of people we can likely only filter for successfully online. In real life, we take people fully as they are, which is both often inconvenient and uncomfortable but also the only place where real love can take root.
The solution remains a kind of heroic agency where we recognize the lack of the ideal and the water we are swimming in, and focus strongly on the little things we can do to change our experience and grow a sense of belonging and context where we are in our communities. Essentially, the solution is love: of others, of a God bigger than us who can “renew the face of the earth,” and of ourselves in a true way, in light of our real and deepest need—all driven by an objective willing of the good rather than the immediate gratification of our senses.
We are, en masse, lonely for many reasons, and it’s easy to try to put it into a quick-article clip. But the key takeaway is that we are lonely because we choose to stay lonely. We can, in fact, solve each other’s existential homelessness by recognizing our own need and consciously meeting it, rather than settling for the inadequate, easy counterfeits that our insistent scrolling offers us.
KAY CLARITY ARCHIVE 