Be the light this Christmas

No-one should be alone at Christmas. Yet so many people are. While you are feasting with your family, spare a thought for those with no-one to celebrate with.

Loneliness happens all year round and despite the planet getting increasingly crowded (7.2 billion people according to the all-knowing Google “oracle”) we are only getting lonelier.

Loneliness has become a worldwide epidemic. Ironically the more sophisticated our communication methods the more isolated we have become. I can remember just 12 years ago how difficult it was to stay in contact with people abroad.

We’d send emails and even (gasp) snail mail but making a phone call was so expensive it was reserved for special occasions like birthdays. You would buy an international call card at a premium and the dreadful thing would barely give you five minutes.

Skype changed things dramatically but it was still a pain with the price of data and so on. Today in two ticks I can send a voice note and voila! Thanks to WhatsApp an international call is no different from calling my neighbour. Yet it hasn’t solved loneliness.

If all the lonely people could raise their hands and join together that would be it, problem solved. But the huge stigma attached to admitting to loneliness holds most people back. We all dread being befriended out of pity. But it just takes one person to be brave enough to not care to create social change.

When I was in Standard 4 (grade 6) at Umhlali Primary (we weren’t fancy enough to have it called a preparatory back then) I knew a girl like that. In fact, we are still friends 20 years later.

Amy-Lea Stranack (now Louis) was a feisty little girl who grew tired of not having very many friends. I did not know her yet because back then I only had one real friend (maybe one or two others but if I cannot remember their names they cannot count). Kineta Naidoo and I were thick as thieves – she was petite and short and I was lanky and tall – so we made quite the pair. One break time Amy approached us at ‘our spot’ with her grand idea.

She proposed to unite all the ‘unpopular kids’ (aka everyone not in the ‘popular group’) into one group where we could all be friends. Eureka! Now this may sound ridiculously obvious if you do not remember the intricacies of playground politics.

Making friends is a tricky business when you are 12 and most socially awkward kids like me are just glad to have one friend to sit with at lunchtime. All the little isolated groups embraced Amy’s plan and suddenly we were a force to be reckoned with. Of course, we had our ups and downs but overall Amy’s courage dramatically affected my last two years of primary school. I had friends and lots of them.

Thinking about how horrid it would feel to spend Christmas alone led me to do some research online.

I found that loneliness does not only cause emotional distress, it is also bad for your health. It is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day increasing the likelihood of mortality by 26% (Holt-Lunstad, 2015).

Also the lonely are not alone.

A survey of more than 2,000 Americans conducted by the Harris Poll last year showed that almost three-quarters (72 percent) of Americans experience loneliness. One-third said they feel lonely at least once a week.

In the UK almost a million older people say they feel lonelier at Christmas and half a million older people can go up to a week without seeing or speaking to anyone (research by Age UK).

While no one is immune, the elderly are often more isolated. Losing your life partner, mobility, your sight or hearing can cut you off from the world (remember the epic movie ‘Scent of a Woman’?).

The wonderful thing is that loneliness is 100% curable. A simple smile could make all the difference. If you’d like some ideas there’s a ’12 Ways to End Loneliness this Christmas’ campaign running in the UK focused on the elderly (www.campaigntoendloneliness.org).

Their philosophy is that it takes only a moment of connection to make all the difference in a lonely person’s day. Be it as simple as stopping for a friendly chat while grocery shopping, making a phone call or pulling up an extra chair at the Christmas table. Whatever you decide to do, put some jingle in a lonely person’s step and be the light this Christmas.