The Long Companionship

Twenty years ago, I came upon Dorothy Day. I thought I knew then what she meant in her intimation that "heaven is a banquet, and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship." I knew then that companionship sounded like having a cluster of friends around me. I was not short of friends, and so, I thought, I had enough fellowship. Most likely, I had the companionship I needed as a young adult who was still letting adolescence's thoughts, behaviours and actions. Dorothy Day further situated our human need for companionship in loneliness: "We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community," she indicated. My youthful bliss believed that I was not lonely with enough friendships and a cluster of people under my roof.

Twenty years later, I have had to navigate a different kind of loneliness. In part, it means the absence of specific individuals who have been a part of my community. I have lost several people to death and translocation. More that is the loneliness that accompanies my life's evolution. Growing up is a way of being accessible and also a way of grieving.

Additionally, growing up is one way to meet the long loneliness. The long loneliness is qualitatively different from the loneliness of youth emanating from a lack of entertainment. The seduction of endless entertainment only exacerbates the long loneliness. As Dorothy Day suggested, we know that the only solution to loneliness is love and that love comes with community. How different then is this community we need from that we have always had?

Because the long loneliness accompanies us across the lifespan, I sense that we need a concrete and foundational love. For such love, we need an intentional community of equals. A community of equals is qualitatively different from a busy, endless population that prevents loneliness through infinite distraction and entertainment. The adult community of equals contrarily accommodates the long loneliness. Many writers proposed qualitative communities or partnerships, such as Carl Rogers (1957) when he wrote about the six necessary conditions for personality change. The Rogerian conditions are perfect in the therapeutic alliance. However, the requirements can be applied in any context where companionship occurs. The states, as Rogers (1957) presented them, assumed therapeutic context as:

1. Two persons are in psychological contact.

2. The first, whom we shall term the client, is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious.

3. The second person, whom we shall term the therapist, is congruent or integrated into the relationship.

4. The therapist experiences unconditional positive regard for the client.

5. The therapist experiences an empathic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference and endeavours to communicate this experience to the client.

6. The communication to the client of the therapist's empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard is to a minimal degree achieved.

Of the six conditions, three require the accompanier in the companionship to hold in creating a growth-promoting climate in which individuals can move forward and become capable of becoming their true self: (1) congruence (genuineness or realness), (2) unconditional positive regard (acceptance and caring), and (3) accurate empathic understanding (an ability to grasp the subjective world of another person deeply).

In more accessible language, Nancy Kline, even when she writes about the listening environment in specific terms, I like to think that such a listening environment forms a deliberate community that facilitates growth and the necessary companionship that healthily accompanies the long loneliness. Kline (1999) presents ten attributes of the listening environment as follows.

1. Attention: Affords to listen with palpable respect without interruption.

2. Equality: Ensures equal turns to think and speak

3. Ease: Offering freedom from internal urgency

4. Incisive Questions: Finding and removing untrue assumptions that distort thinking

5. Information: Supplying the facts Dismantling denial

6. Diversity: Encouraging divergent thinking and diverse group identities

7. Encouragement: Giving courage for cutting edge thinking by removing internal competition

8. Feelings: Allowing sufficient emotional release to restore thinking

9. Appreciation Practicing a 5:1 ratio of appreciation to criticism

10. Place: Creating a physical environment that says to people, "You matter."

Carl Rogers and Nancy Kline suggest the kind of community/environment that contains the long loneliness. Some people will find the necessary companionships easily; within their circle of relationships, work teams, enduring friendships. Other people may have the said partnerships and still not find the desired companionship. Where a person cannot find companionship within ordinary relationships, they can seek out psychotherapy services. Psychotherapists are professional accompaniers along someone's path. They are trained to create open-person centred space that facilitates growth.

Psychotherapists understand that loneliness can be the result of loss, change and growth. Growing up can deepen one's experience of loneliness. Ending certain behaviours, actions, pastimes, or shared trivia with particular individuals can isolate and trigger loneliness. During the passage to new identification, the wilderness can feel daunting. What one needs during this phase is love, and that love can come in a community or the companionship of a therapist. Do not do this life alone when you can find a soul companion. The antidote to our long loneliness might be in long companionships.

References

Kline, N. (1999). Time to think: Listening to ignite the human mind. Hachette UK.

Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of consulting psychology, 21(2), 95.