Latest / Wanzology / Another Solution For Loneliness
Transcript
- Another Solution For Loneliness Yabba dabba doo ah, ah!! Yabba dabba doo ah, ah!!! Hello, hello, hello!! How ya doing? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY. I am your host, The Wanz, kicking it to you live, dun, dun, dun!!! Summer's cruising right along and I am pretty stoked. I've had a pretty good couple of days where I've seen a lot of old friends and participated in some things, and one of the things that I participated in was a, a charity golf tournament. Now I am not a fantasmic, wonderful, professional golfer. I'm more like I lose balls all the time. If you would like a golf ball to get lost, you'll give it to me and say, "Here, hit this one." But it was really cool to be out and doing something for somebody else. Of course, there was a couple of opportunities for me to sing and to be that ‘Thrift Shop’ guy, which goes with the territory. The thing that I was most taken by was strangers becoming acquaintances, and some of those acquaintances becoming friends by the end of the day. Now, I saw a few friends of mine that were playing. I also brought together three friends of mine, one of which who did not and had never met two of the others. So we made a foursome, there was me and my buddy Jake, my buddy Michael, and my buddy James. Now, James didn't know Jacob or Michael, so it was really interesting to watch how the dynamic between all four of us carried us through the day and how other golfers had the same experience where by the end of the day, people who had been standing away from each other are now in like groups of like four or five, and they're talking about how they played and how beautiful the weather was and all sorts of other things. So looking back on that experience, when I was driving home, I thought, you know, I get lonely a lot. I get lonely all the time. I have to make myself sometimes get out of my place and go do something, or else I'll just become a pile of goo watching television and I get sad about it sometimes. Sometimes I even get depressed about it. So what is the-- what is another way that I can get myself or protect myself from digging that hole and ending up feeling like I'm lonely and I don't have anybody 'cause I-- that's not the truth? That is a lie that somehow keeps getting told in my brain. "Nobody likes you.”, “You're all alone.”, “Nobody calls to check on you.", “How come, how come your cousin from across the country can send you a meme every single day supporting your religious spirituality, but one of your nephews who lives less than five miles away never reaches out?” Oh, and there's another nephew. He reaches out, but only when he needs money. He's never really asked, "How are you doing?" Why is that? I seem to be the annoying family member who wants everybody to stay in touch with everybody else. 'Cause I'm always wondering, "How come you haven't talked to so-and-so?" "I don't know. I don't know. They haven't talked to me." Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Anyway, my thoughts coming home were I get a really, really good feeling when I am out doing something for someone other than myself. I thought about that. I've mentored young male kids who are the sons of women out of abusive relationships and are staying in a shelter. I have done walk-a-thons for Multiple S Sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Heart Association, I've always been able to find a place where I can contribute, and you meet really, really cool people, but you also come away, or at least I do, with this feeling of accomplishment, that I did something useful, which doesn't happen very often with too many other things. So my question to you is, have you ever thought about lending someone the most valuable thing that you have? What is that, you ask? Time. Time is the most important thing that any of us have. Why, do you ask? Number one, because you can't replace it. You can't go back to last Tuesday and have something different for lunch. You can't go back five seconds to make an adjustment that would stop the golf ball from slicing into the trees (yeah, that happened.) The second thing is nobody, and I mean nobody, knows how much they have. You can't replace time, and no one, including you, knows how much time you actually have. That's why if you're spending time with someone, it is the ultimate sign that you care about them because you are giving the one thing that is most valuable to you. May not seem like it, but it's true. Ever had the five minutes you really wish you would have gotten back after having a completely and totally useless conversation? Or gone the wrong direction to some kind of meeting or destination. All of a sudden you figure out your GPS in your phone is crazy and sent you the wrong way. All that stuff takes time. You don't get that time back. You don't get extra time like in soccer. They play regulation and then they have something called extra time, which is the referee's estimate of how much time accumulated during a match doing nothing. Somebody laying on the ground or getting the ball or something like that. It's very easy to find spaces by which you, in all your infinite experience and wisdom, can find an opportunity. And that's all it is. I'm pretty sure that you live somewhere where they have schools. And schools are almost always underpopulated with knowing adults. You ever thought of volunteering your time at a school a couple hours a day? Maybe being a bus driver or a crossing guard. You ever thought of visiting retirement homes? Friend of mine gave me an idea and asked me, why didn't I go and play music at retirement homes? Well, I'm trying to figure that out now. What would it look like? Would I play for an hour, two hours? What songs would I sing? How would I do it? Would I need a piano player, or could I just get by on my schleppy guitar skills or just sing a cappella? Either way, we're talking about a segment of the population that really doesn't get many visitors. That would be volunteer work. There are always the mainstays like a food pantry or going out and taking food to homeless people or rescuing pets or whatever. There's always a place, you just have to decide what it is you like and then find out if there's a volunteer position to do it. And if there's not, then it becomes this brilliant idea that you came up with. I can tell you from my experience, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, like someone looking at you, having learned something that you already knew and they didn't know it, thanking you for sharing it. It was just another piece of information they, they learned, and they didn't have it before they met you. You ever have that happen? I have the opportunity every once in a while to be a public speaker, and I try really hard to find gigs where I can speak to high school and college students. And I ask them, "Do you remember when you couldn't figure out what five times five was?" You didn't know what five times five was. You remember? Some of us didn't watch Schoolhouse Rock!. I learned it from Schoolhouse Rock!, but there are people who didn't. So, the next part of that question is, do you remember when you figured it out, and after you figured it out, you explained it to someone else who wasn't sure or didn't know, and they got it? You remember what that felt like? To see somebody else get something that you already knew and they were kinda clueless on or confused by, and all of a sudden it's like, “Oh!!!”, and you see this big, bright light bulb above their head because they figured it out just like you did, thanks to you. You remember what that felt like? I tell teenagers and young adults THAT, my friends, is the reason we live our lives. That is the meaning of life, to inspire that feeling so that we feel that way, and there's no way of manufacturing it unless, you give something to someone else and they appreciate what you gave them, whether it be your time...money is kind of out of bounds on this because, Jesus, you can find money anywhere. If you really, really want to, you can find money anywhere, but you can't find someone who can help you figure out how to do a Rubik's Cube or maybe help you with a thousand-piece puzzle, or go for a walk and talk about what your high school experience was like, and they, being twenty years older than you, talk about their high school experience, and you compare the similarities as well as the differences. Or what about what's going on in your town? There's a new Walmart! There's a new WinCo! They closed down the Winn-Dixie! I can't believe that they tore down the old junior high school and turned it into a parking garage. There's always something, something that you can share with somebody you don't know. It's not strict volunteer work. I mean, I'm not talking about the Peace Corps. If you don't know what the Peace Corps is, Google it. It was a really, really big thing when I was a kid. They called it, “The most important job you would ever love.” I can't think of anything these days that meets that criteria, “The most important job that you'll ever love, the Peace Corps.” And all of these people volunteered to go help people overseas, help them build villages, and they helped them with farming. They gave of themselves to help other people. They used their time in service of someone else. Now, your experience might be different, but more times than not, I feel better when I simply open the door and let someone go into the store before me or leave the store before me. I just open the door for them and they go out, sometimes they say thank you. Most times they say thank you, and when they don't, I say it for them to get them out of whatever and wherever their brain was stuck. They have to engage in some way, shape, or form. If they don't engage, eh, three seconds I won't get back. I really don't care. I did what I could. I can't control anybody else. You ever go shopping at the grocery store and wait until somebody has unloaded their cart, and then you get out and go grab the cart from them, so they don't have to walk it to wherever the little meeting place for the carts are or back into the store? I've done that before. I've offered to like, unload somebody's groceries because they were, like, seventy-something years old, and they didn't look very strong, and all I did was, "Do you need a hand with that? Can I help you with that?" "No, that's all right," is usually the answer. But I feel better because I offered. Doing it is for me, it's not for who I help, it's for me. It's to remind me that I am capable of DOING things, and I think loneliness, the root of it, is being stuck so far in yourself, you have really no other person to dig you out. You have no other interaction with a human to change how you feel or why you feel that way. I'm telling you, I think the biggest blessing God gave me was the gift of singing. I sing everywhere all the time. I never know when someone's gonna say, "Oh, you have a nice voice.”, “Oh, that sounds so pretty.”, “Oh, I really like that song.”, “I remember that song!" I didn't plan that, I'm just doing what I always do, occupying my time with a gift that God gave me. I'll leave you with this. My mom told me, "God gave you a gift. You're supposed to share it with people.", so there are times when I have gotten all wrapped around the axle and backwards, and I don't know why I'm here, and then I remember what my mom told me. I'm only supposed to try to share this gift that I was given because of the effect that it has on other people, right? Why am I here? To share the gift that God gave me, that's why I'm here. Somebody might not know. More times than not, there are people on this planet who have never done the things that you have done Volunteer. Give of your time. It is the most precious thing any of us have because you can't replace it and nobody knows how much they've got. Do me a solid and tell somebody about this episode of the podcast if you feel so compelled. Maybe somebody will discover something they didn't know before, right? Either way, a positive suggestion from you helps you. Try it. You'll like it. Goodbye then, g’bye!!!!