Table for One, Please

Hawthorne Boulevard
Source: http://www.portlandground.com

I still remember the reaction on the face of the waitress who seated me at the Japanese restaurant on Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland back in 2003. I’d been backpacking solo for the previous two weeks or so up along the West Coast after parting ways with a friend in San Francisco and had worked my way from there to Salt Lake City, Seattle, Port Angeles, Victoria BC and finally Portland. I had caught a bus from downtown Portland, Oregon, to the hip and groovy Hawthorne District to check out the place. And I often had meals by myself during the two weeks whilst travelling solo.

When I replied to the woman that I was after a table for just one, she had this blank look on her face as if she’d misheard me. She gave me the benefit of the doubt and asked me again. I nodded and said yes, one. I could almost hear her thoughts from the way her face had betrayed her. It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten a such a look from a waiter/waitress. But I was hungry and I just wanted some place where I could sit down, rest my weary feet and get some tucker.

“Perhaps it’s just not the thing to do here in America,” I mused to myself. Or maybe anywhere. But I certainly felt the underlying sentiment much more pronounced in America - or maybe it was just me. The funny thing is it’s perfectly well and socially acceptable if you eat alone at McDonald’s, KFC or at any fast-food restaurant, but yet it’s somehow seen as not-the-done-thing to eat alone at a proper restaurant. I thought back to the observations I’d made in San Francisco two weeks prior – on the evening of my birthday when I’d turned a quarter of a century old – and how I noticed I was truly indeed the only person in the entire restaurant sitting at a table all by myself. Every other table had at least two or more people. But back to the Japanese restaurant. As I followed this petite waitress to my table, I could almost picture the woman projecting this huge letter ‘L’ on my forehead.

As I sat down and looked at the menu, I began to wonder whether having a meal in a restaurant by myself would make those sitting around me feel sorry or take pity on me. What would their thoughts be? “You poor fella.” “He must be lonely.” “Gosh, he must be lonely even if he doesn’t look lonely.” “I wonder if he’s just broken up with his girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/pet dog?” “He’s such a loser. Doesn’t he have any friends?”

But as I sat there, I felt great because I felt as if I was bucking the trend, as if I was challenging a social norm, an unsaid rule that one could not or must not enjoy being by oneself. It's like walking into a lift full of people and intentionally standing there facing everyone else in the face when they're all looking in the same direction ahead, each trying to avoid eye contact with you. My only complaint was that the service seemed a bit slow. In fact, very slow. Perhaps they had forgotten me. I mean, after all, it was only me. Just me. And therefore only half the normal takings (had there been two people). Instead, it was just one solitary person tucked away in the corner of the restaurant occupying a table meant for two.

OK, OK, perhaps I am being melodramatic and possibly a bit paranoid here. But I have encountered and still encounter people who baulk at or cannot comprehend the thought of anyone travelling solo, going to the movies alone or going away on holidays on their own. My parents’ view on this, on the other hand, fall at the other extreme end. They just think a holiday’s not really a holiday unless they go along with busloads of their friends, relatives, cousins, brothers, sisters. OK, maybe not busloads but you get the point. They would tell me that it’s meaningless going away on a holiday by yourself. And I agree with them. It is more fun to go away on holiday with at least a friend or two, maybe a handful even, and perhaps better still, if it’s with that special friend of yours. You can share the memories and not to mention, the costs too. But sometimes, life is solitary. And sometimes there are things that one has to do by oneself. I’m not advocating a reclusive lifestyle or to live like a hermit. Neither am I elevating the status of a solitary experience beyond that of a communal experience or community living. But what I am saying is that it is OK to be alone sometimes. And it is OK if we end up having to confront part of that loneliness that can often arise from doing things alone by oneself.

I wonder if many are afraid of doing things alone, of going to the movies alone, or taking a holiday and eating in a restaurant alone precisely because of this fear – this fear of having to confront their loneliness. This sense of isolation, disconnectedness, of not being known, that sits somewhere in varying degrees of intensity in each and every one of us. Or the opposite would be that we live alone but live such busy lives that we never really have time to be alone or feel alone. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying it’s wrong to want company, to prefer company, to desire having a meal with someone or to go away on holiday with a mate. After all, I am only too aware of God’s affirmation for relationship and community and his initial proclamation that “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper.” (Genesis 2:18)

The late Henri Nouwen once wrote some great stuff on loneliness. A Catholic priest who remained celibate throughout his whole life, he too grappled with loneliness and had on numerous occasions been so heavily weighed down by it that he’d weep inconsolably over the phone to a few of his closest friends in the middle of the night. Yet he compared the wound of loneliness to that of the Grand Canyon – a deep incision in the surface of our existence which can become a source of beauty and self-understanding.

Nouwen challenged the popular promise offered to both Christians and seekers-of-the-Christian faith alike that the Christian way of life would take away the pain of loneliness. “Come to Jesus,” so it goes, “and you will never be lonely because you will always have a friend.” On one hand, it is true that you would always have a friend in Jesus. But the fact is that Jesus never promised anyone who came to him that they wouldn’t have to deal with the wound of their loneliness ever again. Rather, what he actually promised was that he would never leave or forsake those who came to him (Hebrews 13:5). He never promised that he would take away our loneliness or stop us from ever feeling alone, isolated, pain or a sense of being disconnected. Big difference there.

Instead, Nouwen suggested that the Christian way of life actually protects and cherishes loneliness as a precious gift. Yet, it often seems we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and instead allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief. According to Nouwen, the painful awareness of loneliness is in fact an opportunity for us “to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence; the awareness of loneliness might be very well a gift that we must protect and guard, because our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for those who can tolerate its sweet pain.”

Alas, when we’re impatient, Nouwen writes, and want to give up our loneliness and try and overcome the incompleteness we feel, we often easily relate to the rest of our human world with unrealistic, if not devastating expectations. “We ignore what we already know – that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune, man, woman will ever satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. The truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence. Thus, we keep hoping that one day, we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfil our potentials, the book which will explain everything, and the place where we can feel at home.” Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands on those around us. Many relationships and marriages are ruined because neither partner was able to fulfil the often hidden hope that the other would take his or her loneliness away. And this is a reminder for me too, because many singles can often live with the naïve dream that in the intimacy of a relationship or marriage, their loneliness will be taken away.

Nouwen went further – many of us suffer, he wrote, because of the false supposition on which we may have based our lives on. That supposition being that “there should be no fear or loneliness, no confusion or doubt. But these sufferings can only be dealt with creatively when they are understood as wounds integral to our human condition.” And thus, the Christian way of life is actually a confronting way to live one’s life precisely because it does not allow its followers to live with illusions of perfect wholeness and having achieved a state of utter self-perfection. Instead, the Christian faith keeps reminding us that we are mortal and broken, not to keep us imprisoned or to break our spirits, but rather, it is only with the recognition of our mortal, broken condition that the process of liberation actually starts.




















Recommended Book: The Wounded Healer by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Image Doubleday, 1972, 100pp