And the LORD God said, it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.
GENESIS 2:18
IF YOU HAD been following your Television closely for the past decades like I did, you have probably noticed that the days of The Lone Ranger are over. The days of Clark Kent Supermen and Chuck Norris The Walker Texas Ranger who used to insist “I work alone,” or “I don’t need a partner,” are long gone.
It is beginning to dawn to the world that life is more like The Fast and Furious, The Power Rangers and The Minions. Heroes become heroes when they work together. Remember in The Expendables, just like in The Fast and Furious, the best characters of all time had to come together in order to create the best of the best movies ever!
Everybody, from the famous to the common, even superheroes, need someone. We might not need everybody, and not everybody needs us – but no one is an island. Everybody needs someone.
Love is not something we merely want; love is something each of us desperately needs. Sometimes we get wounded trying to find it. Then with our souls writhing in heartbreak pain, we yell a bitter confession through our clenched teeth,
“I will never love again!”
But it will not be long before life would have weakened our knees and our lively spirits would have sunk in a tearful ocean of loneliness, that we find ourselves screaming again,
“I want to be loved! Is there somebody out there?”
Prince Charming, you might have it all – the palace, gold, fame and glory – but you need your Cinderella. Deep inside you cannot be satisfied, because it is not wealth that completes people. It is actually a somebody. That somebody is more than just a work colleague or business friend. That person is your life partner – a destiny companion.
Half of your destiny lies with somebody else right now.
It doesn’t matter you are as ugly as monster Shrek, there is Fiona for you. And Fiona there is a Shrek for you. Somebody who loves and appreciates you just the way you are.
Without a skin tonner – you are loved.
Without a foreign accent – you are loved.
Without having to get yourself taller or shorter, richer or poorer – you are loved just the same. That is true love, as soft as the mother’s touch and as unconditional as Jesus’ love.
At least the world is beginning to realize we have over emphasized on independence, self-reliance and “you can do it alone” attitude so much that we have overlooked those things that we cannot do alone. (Because to polish to finest quality, many jewel moments of life require two heads rather than two hands.)
Humanity had almost drowned in the frenzy of materialism and business cosmopolitanism sweeping through our time. Let’s admit the truth; in our passing century money has been more than just money. Money has been a narcotic drug. Many have loved and married for money, and many have divorced for it too…
We don’t want to call them by name, just in case you and I get sued J. (And I am sure you also understand the riskiest words to utter in this world, are words of truth).
The whole point is that most of us have hauled love, marriage and family to the rusty backyards of our lives. I am sure you agree with me that love, marriage and family needs some polishing in our generation.
In fact, we need some large biceps broad chested creature with a twenty pound hammer in hands, someone who will mightily knock off the rust and dust that has coated love so much that few now believe it exists.
With parents lost in the business field, many children have been abandoned in the nursing arms of erotically explicit Television screens and violently bloody computer games. Even motherly love has lost its warmth. As the Lord Jesus said,
… the love of many shall wax cold.
MATTHEW 24:12
To make matters worse our children are tired of indoor games. They go out to play, and do you know where? Yes… out of our sight and out of our minds – in the backyards.
When they should be playing with toys and bumping into tools and chairs, they find and start playing with love, marriage and family. Our children are not in love because they know they need someone; they love because they have nothing else to play with.
The time has come that we remove love and marriage off the backyards of our lives. Let’s teach our children to recognize true love, so that they don’t take it for granted when it comes.
Let us teach our children that one day they will need someone, someone fit enough to accompany them through life’s warm and winter seasons.
Let’s open their eyes and teach them strategies that will make them find true love. That is the purpose of this book. To help every vulnerable single find true love! It’s easy, if taught how.
It’s not as if singleness is bad. There is absolutely nothing bad with self-reliance. In fact, Psychology proves through successive experiments that solitude helps unlock our creativity. Sometimes being alone helps you discover the real you.
Anyway, if you cannot live alone then you cannot live with somebody. You can never truly know how important someone is until you live without them.
Some people step into love thinking it is going to take their loneliness away, but it is very possible to be lonely in love. It is possible to be lonely in a world full of people. Tell you an unbelievable fact? Nobody was given the power to take away anyone’s loneliness in this world.
Some people think love will turn them into good people…
Love will not turn a bad guy good. Otherwise truly loved players would have long stopped being heartbreakers. Love doesn’t make a nagging woman shut her mouth. Otherwise we would have sealed many lips by just a kiss.
If you want to be good, make yourself good all by yourself. If you cannot control yourself nobody can control you. If you want to keep the anger, and don’t want to comfort yourself, no-one can comfort you no-matter how much they may care to.
If you live life expecting someone to change you, then you will be a burden in love. Your lover is not your parent. Be individually responsible for who you are. Learn to stand still. Learn to stand alone…
You Need a Season of Singleness in Your Life.
That means in life we will have to turn some people down. We have to allow some people to pass us buy. It is by learning to say “No.” that we learn to truthfully say “Yes.” To get the best of life, we must say no to the good so we can say yes to the best.
Like I write in my other book The Stranger in the Mirror, sometimes we rush to get to know someone better when we don’t even know our own selves!
If you don’t know yourself – then you will fall in love with people who are merely good enough for your photos but not good enough for you.
They may suit the life you see on TV but that doesn’t mean they will suit the life you have. The only thing they will change in your life is your relationship status. Only when you know who you are can you know who you need.
So take your time. Turn that Stranger in the Mirror into your life’s best friend. It’s only the love that you give to yourself that you can give to somebody else. We are supposed to love others as we love ourselves, NOT more.
Spend all your teenage and early young adulthood years totally loving yourself. Funny enough – many run into love when they are still young, only to run away from love when they are old enough.
They run away from love saying, “I think I need a break, I realised I have to focus on my dreams and accomplish something of my own…”
Hey! The early years that you spent falling in love were actually the years you should have spent following your dreams and getting to know yourself better.
Only if you know yourself better can you recognise the person who makes you better and keeps you better. If you miss that you will always attract people that make you bitter.
You are running away from love because you think relationships don’t work. But how you select your partner when you know your purpose in life is totally different from how you select before you know it.
Your Purpose shows you your Partner
First decide where you want your life to go, before you decide who should come with you. Some people are only good enough to stay with you where you are, and not good enough to get you ahead.
You need a season of singleness.
But Being Alone for too Long is Dangerous
Loneliness Statistics
In 2006 a study of 3000 nurses with breast cancer found out that women without close friends where four times more likely to die than women with 10 or more friends.
Divorced men are twice as likely as married men to die prematurely (25 to 50 years of age)
̶ The Lonely Society
The truth is we cannot live healthy satisfying lives if we are alone for too long. Humans are social beings. We flourish in company and flounder in isolation. God understands this problem, which is why he says in His Holy Word
It is not good that the man be alone, I will make a helper suitable for him.
GENESIS 2:18
Before you read Martin’s story, note this one thing. God created everything and saw that it was good. But there is one thing in the whole Bible that God saw that it was “not good” (Genesis 2:18) – being alone. No-one is meant to be alone.
Some people want to deny that they need love. But the person who acts most unlovable is the person who most needs to be loved. Love is an inborn need that we can never outgrow. Those who seem to reject love are actually hurting inside. They have been disappointed or rejected and heartbroken. Deep within, as Bolton sang, they “wanna know what love is.”
Martin’s Story (Age 53)
I have lived alone on my own for twelve years now. I don’t see it as a choice. It’s more like something that just happened to me, and it’s become a habit.
I can see the benefits of living with other people, and I do feel that I am missing something… that emotional blanket that you have when you share a home…
̶ The Lonely Society
Sometimes we get carried away in one love relationship after another. Instead of dating to love, when we get carried away, we start dating to date. We start dating for the pleasure rather than the purpose of it…
Dating is not for adventure, for exploration of for sex. Dating is for settling down.
If we don’t notice that early enough, many of us will spend all our young and middle adulthood under restaurant fluorescents, in the dim lights of our date-nights, and in gig parties of our generation. Only to realize when we are 53 years old (perhaps like Martin) that we actually are alone in this world.
When we are young, family doesn’t seem to matter. We tell ourselves we want to be free, forever living life light and easy. It is only after the forties have come and gone that we realize we made a fatal mistake out of our lives…
For all the wealth (and many times the poverty) we have accumulated there is nobody to share it with.
For all the jewels of wisdom, episodes of pain, sadness and laughter that fill the heart – there is nobody to share it with. Have you ever imagined that scenario in your life?
I am sure the real pain comes when you realize you have nobody to call your own, and nobody calls you his/her own…
All the people that you once dated realized when there was still enough time that you were a never-settling ever-date-lane kid, so they gave you back your heart and gave theirs to somebody else…
When they gave you your heart back, in your early years you called it “moving on.” Now in your deadline years you have learnt to be true to yourself, so you now know you were “turned down.”
Like Martin, you realize that your life is missing something more important than past memories. You are missing a someone. What a surprising sadness!
Five Problems that Attack People who are Alone
i. People who are alone find it difficult to regulate and control themselves.
Resultantly they tend to form self-destructive habits such as over eating, relying on alcohol, and at times over dieting.
Life is a journey, you need someone who helps you take a rest, or bring you up to start walking again. Studies show that we are more likely to quit on our gym; jogging sessions; diets and even on the demands of our jobs and business if we are alone, than if we are with someone who supports, stands and walks hand in hand with us.
In the Bible, we learn that the greatest temptations and battles of our lives come when we are alone. There in solitude and loneliness many lose their control and fall…
Jesus was tempted alone in the wilderness. Samson fell in love with a Philistine prostitute when he was travelling all by himself. David fornicated with Uriah’s wife when he was left alone in the city, all men having left for war. (Luke 4: 1 – 13, Judges 16:1, 2 Samuel 11).
Sometimes being alone gives us the illusion that even God is not watching. Only after we have fallen do we realize God and a whole lot other people were watching after all.
ii. You are more likely to be stressed with life if you are alone than with somebody.
Almost everyone I have heard saying they can live life alone don’t even say it with a smile. Just saying it is bitter, what more living what they say? Lack of love creates an emptiness that sucks out the joy of life. Lack of love is blackhole of life, where everything bright and lively is swallowed into it.
But Love is like sunshine, every time you get it you feel a light shining in your heart; and your face beams with a smile the same way a flower blooms at sunset after a gentle rain.
Love is not an option; love is an ultimatum. We rather learn to love each other and to live together or we are doomed!
iii. Lonely people experience more difficulties in finding sleep.
Studies around the world, including even in Japan, continue to show that single and divorced people reported more struggles with sleep than those who are married (Kawata et al, 2020).
This is why sleeping tablets feel so inappropriate. Some of us are trying to find in pills what we should find in people.
iv. Lonely people bottle their pain inside, and are less likely to find emotional support from others.
Emotions like anger, if bottled for too long, result in outbursts – that is shouting, being harsh, being easily irritated, and insensitive to everyone around for no apparent reason.
A human being is a social being. To be more precise, we are love beings. Sharing your day with someone is therapeutic. Belonging to someone who belongs to gives you strength.
Those who shun love, have never been loved. They have only been loved by that fake kind of love that comes to take, break promises and comes to leave.
This book and all the seminars I run will help you get over that type of love, and to get away from it. But the most important party of this journey is understanding that if love really didn’t matter, losing it wouldn’t have hurt you that much.
Love matters. The day you find it you will know that it matters; but before you do – you just have to believe it.
If you believe in love, you get closer to finding it. If you doubt love, your doubt becomes a barrier that makes love fail to leap over to you.
v. Lonely people have a reduced response to diseases.
The Lonely Society cancer study shows loneliness causes decreased immunity and function of the cardiovascular systems. Furthermore, a happy marriage is known to lower blood pressure.
That shows a good marriage is healthy for you. Like I said, don’t go looking in a pill what you should find in a person. Getting married remains one of the factors most associated with longer life, happiness and healthy living.
The main goal of this chapter was to show you that as you pass through your season of singleness, it is good to always keep in mind that one day you will need to find somebody to partner you through the journey of life.
Everybody needs somebody. But how do we choose that somebody?
Let’s find out in the next chapter…
