A Man With No Friends

Don't Feel Sorry for Him Just Yet

There is a man we all think we know.

He has no big group. His phone does not light up. Nobody is planning his birthday.

We see him and we fill in a story. Something must be wrong with him. He must be hard to get along with. He must have pushed everyone away.

I have been sitting with this story for a few days. I think we get it backwards more than we admit.

Sometimes the quiet man is not broken. He is just tired of fake.

He had the big group once. He watched it shrink the second things got hard. The people who showed up for the good times vanished for the bad ones. He learned.

So he stopped trying to fill the room. He started watching who was actually in it.

He'd rather have two people who are real than twenty who are convenient.

People call that coldness. I don't think it is. It looks more like a man who decided not everyone gets a key to his life.

But here is where I want to slow down.

There is a difference between alone and lonely. From the outside, they look the same. From the inside, they are not even close.

A man can be alone and completely at peace. A man can be surrounded by people and aching. The hard part is that you cannot tell which is which just by counting heads.

So before we admire him, or pity him, it is worth asking a quieter question. Did he choose the quiet? Or did the quiet choose him?

I don't think there is one answer. I think there are two very different men who look identical from across the room.