Let's Get Coffee: Navigating the Existential Angst of Loneliness

Do the hard thing. Welcome the new person. Yes, you’re busy. Yes, it will be uncomfortable. Yes, it will be awkward. But do it. It’s on you. Not the new person. You.

by Kate Gaston

On a muggy day in June, my husband and I schlepped our earthly belongings from a moving van into our new apartment. We’d rented a gingerbread-style Victorian house in the heart of a coastal New England town. Small towns in Connecticut know how to do charming, and our new home was off-the-scales. Which made it all the more ironic that this idyllic setting would serve as the backdrop for our lives to devolve into, well, a bit of a dumpster fire.

Moving is hard. There’s no two ways to slice it. Moving cross-country to a place we’d never been, in which we knew not a soul? Harder still. We’d uprooted from a tightly-knit community for my husband, David, to begin an Infectious Disease fellowship at a fancy institution. We’d been warned the hours of fellowship would be brutal. But with blind optimism, perhaps the only means by which people pursue medical careers, we figured we’d be okay. We were not okay. Previously, we’d been that mildly insufferable family who sat down together around the dinner table each night. But with a husband working 90+ hour weeks, that tradition died a tormented, scrabbling death.

A month or so after arriving in our new city, I hurried my daughter through breakfast on a Sunday morning, and drove us to a local church she and I had been visiting. I’m no stranger to visiting churches, but this was the first time I’d done it without my husband by my side. This would mark the third week in a row I’d visited the same church, and as I pulled into the parking lot that morning, I promised my friendship-starved heart I wouldn’t leave without getting another woman’s contact info. A phone number would suffice, but if I could make a concrete plan to meet up with her for coffee? Even better.

I’m well aware the first few weeks of church visits are an unofficial sizing-up period. The visitor maintains the right to cut and run. The congregation will be polite, but noncommittal. However, when a visitor shows up for three weeks running like I was about to do, it sends a message. Commitment is in the air. It’s game on.

Clasping my daughter’s hand, we entered the sanctuary. I surveyed the room, weighing my seating options. There was a subtle strategy involved in my choice of pew. It was not random. Certainly not. Choosing a pew too far toward the back of the sanctuary would signal a desire for anonymity. Choosing a pew too close to the front might be perceived as too eager. I wanted the Goldilocks zone. I chose a pew on the righthand side of the room, midway toward the front. My choice, I told myself, expressed a level of commitment and intentionality but without any ambitious overtones.

Presbyterian ministers are not known for their brevity, so I had ample time to survey the congregation, noting a few women in my vicinity who possessed potential for friendship. Finally, the service drew to a close. After the benediction was given, I slowly, oh so slowly, began to gather my Bible, pen, and notebook. This slowness, like the choice of pew, was intentional. If I moved too quickly, I’d be ready to walk out of the sanctuary before anyone had the chance to notice me, much less work up the courage to talk to me. My daughter, unencumbered by the colossal weight of social dynamics, scampered through the thicket of legs toward the refreshment table.

The organic moment I’d orchestrated was stretching, stagnating into an inert, airless space. There I was. Still sitting alone. Mortification bubbled through my bloodstream. My heart lurched into a rollicking gallop. Paralyzed by indecision in that moment—that critical, pivotal moment! —I prayed someone, anyone, would approach me.

I stood, glancing around. Those women I’d sized up as friendship potential? Gone. Vanished into mauve-carpeted oblivion. Everywhere I looked, clusters of smiling, happy church people turned in upon themselves, closing rank, forming impenetrable social barricades of pleated-front khaki pants and tasteful sundresses.

Panic streaked through my mind. Was there something repulsive about my appearance? Had the hem of my skirt hiked itself up during the sermon? Was it now, at this very moment, tucked into the waistband of my underpants? Be cool, Kate, I thought, and glanced down. Things looked fine from the front. I ran my hand quickly along my rear, performing that classic wedgie-check maneuver known to skirt-wearers everywhere. But no. All hemlines were accounted for. Nothing in my appearance warranted pariah status.

By this point, I’d been standing alone for two full-bodied minutes, grinning in the vacant manner of church ladies and lunatics. It occurred to me I had two options. I could boldly move into the crowd, and strike up a conversation with a stranger at random. Or I could grab my kid and hightail it for the exit.

Before I go on, I need you to understand something about me. I am an extrovert, sprung from the loins of generations of extroverts. My forebears set the standard for church small-talk everywhere. In my childhood, seldom did a Sunday morning pass when ours wasn’t the last car in the church parking lot. Conversation is my birthright.

Conversation, my parents taught me, is like a game of tennis. One person serves the ball, the opening question, and the game begins. The other player receives the ball by answering the opening salvo, but then must return the ball back over the net with a question of their own. Each person continues offering this give-and-receive, and if both parties play effectively, the result is the sustained volley of a satisfying conversation.

I chose option one. Squaring my shoulders, I marched into that crowded church foyer. If conversations are like tennis matches, I was Federer. I was Agassi. I was Venus and Serena. That foyer? My Wimbledon. I was firing shots over the net like my life depended on it.

I might as well have been serving tennis balls at a herd of antelope for all the good it did me.

My bucket of tennis balls—my conversational arsenal—was spent. I was looking down the barrel of another friendless, interminable Sunday afternoon. And that’s when I spotted her. Across the foyer, I recognized a woman I’d chatted with the previous week. She was my last chance, my only hope for that friendly coffee date I’d been longing for. But she was already moving toward the exit. I grabbed my daughter, elbowed my way through the milling crowd, and out the door. I spotted her climbing into her minivan. I dashed toward her car, and, like a woman unhinged, knocked on her window.

The woman’s eyebrows raised in baffled confusion as she powered down her window. With a self-deprecating chuckle which I hoped communicated I wasn’t trying to murder her, I said, “Hey! Sorry to be awkward! I’m Kate? We met last week? I’m new here? Could I get your phone number? Maybe we could grab coffee sometime?” The woman smiled tightly. She gave me her phone number. She was careful not to make eye contact as she rolled up her window.

I never called her. The whole interaction left me feeling like a big, needy weirdo.

In 2023, the Surgeon General released a 70-page advisory, citing loneliness as a public health crisis. He’s not wrong. Data has been piling up, pointing to a host of morbidities associated with loneliness. The definition of loneliness, according to the American Psychology Association is “a discrepancy between one’s desired and achieved levels of social relations.” This definition makes loneliness seem, well, not so terribly bad. But when you find yourself alone on that barren tundra of social isolation, and you encounter loneliness in the wild, it’s worse, so much worse, than any definition can convey.

Loneliness is a mix tape of humanity’s least favorite emotions: sadness, isolation, emptiness, anxiety, longing, despair, boredom, and a sense of being overlooked or forgotten. Smush those emotions into a ball, toss them into the warm, dark, moist environment of the human psyche, and what grows will be loneliness. Loneliness makes you chase people down in parking lots. Loneliness is a steady drip, drip, dripping of psychic pain. Loneliness is a sad clown handing you a balloon filled with heartache.

It’s theorized that loneliness is a vestigial social organ, an evolutionary hanger-on. As humans climbed out of the primordial sludge, we found ourselves profoundly vulnerable, easily picked off by predators. No claws. No teeth. Just soft, squishy, defenseless morsels. The constant threat of being eaten drew humans together, forming a community based on mutual protection. To find oneself outside the protection of the tribe, alone in a perilous world, would have been catastrophic. Eventually, just as hunger makes us seek food, the pangs of loneliness would begin to act as a psychic flare, compelling us to seek the protection of relationships. Though there is less risk today of being devoured by wolves, it is hypothesized this fear of social alienation still haunts our DNA.

I would like to suggest there is something deeper at play, something more complex than an evolutionary trait. Consider with me, for a moment, the Trinity. It’s surprising to me that no license or registration is required to write about the Trinity. I mean, I need a license to catch fish, but not to write about one of the stickiest, most mysterious aspects of God. I’ll tread lightly here, hopefully staying on the happy side of heresy.

The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—existed outside the confines of time. And within their infinite existence, the three enjoyed perfect oneness, perfect communion, perfect community. If humanity is made in the image of God, it would follow we reflect this same capacity for call-and-response, this same need, desire, and delight in relationship.

Paul F.M. Zahl, in his book Peace in the Last Third of Life: A Handbook of Hope for Boomers, riffs on this very idea. With wry wisdom, Zahl writes of that split between our true self and false self. The true self is that part of us that is eternal, the imago Dei, the soul. That eternal part of ourselves is born looking for connection with God. Though we spend a tremendous amount of money, energy, and time searching for fullness through any number of other distractions, Zahl writes, “…the star to which your true self was unendingly looking to tie its wagon…was actually God, is God, and will always henceforth be God.”

Kate’s Rubric of Social Responsibility

No one from that church ever invited me out for a cup of coffee. However, the events of that fateful morning were not without benefit. They led me to create what I’d come to call Kate’s Rubric of Social Responsibility. Whenever I encounter another human, and I’m attempting to decide who is responsible for beginning the conversation, I ask myself this series of simple questions:

• Have I been in this room/building/space before?

• Do I know more people in this room than the other person appears to know?

• If asked, could I direct someone to the bathrooms?

• If asked, could I direct someone to the paper towels?

• If asked, could I direct someone to the coffee?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, the responsibility to begin the conversation with the other human is on me.

If, however, the answer to any of these questions is no, I progress to a slightly more complicated rubric. Stay with me. It gets tricky here. I ask myself the following two questions:

• Did I put on my own pants this morning?

• Did I tie my own shoes today?

If the answer to either of these questions is yes, the responsibility to begin the conversation is still on me.

In short, dear reader, introduce yourself to the new person. You will be able to identify this person by the brittle grin on her face and her propensity toward obsessive wedgie-checking. That new person might still be using GPS to find her way home. That new person might be lonelier than she’s ever felt in her life. That new person might be in your church on a Sunday morning in a state of desperation. Whatever the case, it’s likely that new person doesn’t have the emotional margin to stage elaborate courtship rituals to win your friendship. Do the hard thing. Welcome that person. Yes, you’re busy. Yes, it will be uncomfortable. Yes, it will be awkward. But do it. It’s on you. Not the new person. You.

We aren’t required to be everyone’s best friend, but exercising some imagination and extending ourselves toward welcoming the outsider is on us.

Beware the numbing lure of social comfort. Rarely is a social barricade the result of malice. Your participation in the barricade will almost never be a conscious choice. Often the strongest social barriers are constructed out of nothing more than casual indifference, built upon a foundation of apathy.

If you’re reading this and you’re the new person, there are some concrete things you can do to combat loneliness. First, get yourself to a place where humans gather. Throw yourself into the path of other humans. Don’t wait around for people to notice you. If I’ve learned anything from moving across the country multiple times, people aren’t good at noticing the new person. Are you sporty? Join a kickball league. Do you play games? Find the local game cafe. Do you enjoy eating food? Reading books? Cross-stitching cats on pillows? Find other people doing these things and sit down with them. Eat with them. Read with them. Cross-stitch with them.

After you’ve thrown yourself in the path of other humans, go a step further. In his book The Gift, Lewis Hyde writes, “Spatial proximity becomes social life through an exchange of gifts.” To that end, show up early and make the coffee. Volunteer to re-inflate the kickballs. Pass out the bulletins. Set up chairs before the meeting. Fold up the tables after the meeting. Bring a plate of cookies. Wash dishes after the meal. These acts of service are, in fact, gifts. And it’s true that the gifts of service you offer will transform spatial proximity into social life. Yes, you’re busy. Yes, it will be awkward. But do it, and do it consistently. Side-by-side labor is the golden ticket for building relationships.

This admonition cuts both ways, too. As hosts, we must pay attention to the warp and weave of the hospitality we offer. When we welcome lonely people into our space, of course, we want to communicate that we’ve considered their needs and comfort. However, if there’s no chink in the organizational armor, nowhere to allow a newcomer the chance to contribute, hospitality can actually be hindered. If every task is buttoned up tight, it gives newcomers nowhere to offer their own gifts of service. Frictionless spaces can cause guests to feel that literally nothing is required of them. But that might actually be an impediment to welcoming the stranger.

This will sound strange, but sometimes you must welcome the lonely by giving them something to do.

My family has moved twice more since our time in New England, finally coming to rest in Nashville, Tennessee. Though our first year was challenging in the ways all new places are challenging, it helped to remember that moment, years ago, standing alone in a church parking lot. Experiencing loneliness offered me a chance to grapple with my understanding of hospitality. And now, when I enjoy the richness of community, the fellowship is sweeter because I’ve experienced its absence.

I have been the stranger. Now I am called to welcome the stranger.

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An Alabama native, Kate was homeschooled before it was even remotely considered normal. She completed her undergraduate degree at Bryan College and went on to graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For eight years, Kate worked as a PA in a trauma and burn ICU before ping-ponging across the nation for her husband’s medical training. She and her family are currently putting down roots in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, Kate enjoys homeschooling her daughter and tutoring in her local classical homeschool community. She also finds deep satisfaction in long, meandering conversations at coffee shops, oil painting, writing, and gazing pensively into the middle distance. You can read more of her work at her Substack: That Middle Distance.

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