Remembering Community

At a conference last week, one speaker cited an amazing statistic: fully half of adults ages 45 to 63 are unmarried and of those one in three have never been married.

While I’ll certainly grant that some percentage of those single adults between 45 and 63 are happy, fulfilled, and firmly planted in a web of healthy relationships, I’m equally certain that many, many of them—probably the majority—are not.

When a never-married friend of mine in his mid-50s tells me that the biggest fear he and people like him face is the fear of dying alone, I was stunned. Just that fact that people think about that betrays a profound loneliness even if for many dying alone is a very real possibility.

The two action items that fall out of this fact are simple.

First, those who are married need to make room in their lives for single peers. New data indicates that after a divorce, it is very unlikely that pastors, church members, or friends will call the newly single people. After the death of a spouse, the calls keep up for a few weeks and then go away. No surprise then that older singles drop out of their old communities and, sadly, most don’t connect with new ones.

Second, while it’s difficult and often frustrating, singles need to cling to their communities even if it is from time to time as though they don’t belong. After my dad died, my mom said she felt like a fifth wheel. Feel like a fifth wheel and press on until you don’t feel like a fifth wheel any more. You belong.

Remember how once upon a time we baby boomers were all going to move to communes? Remember the enduring myth of what a fabulous community they had at Woodstock? We were the generation always talking about community. And while job demands, suburbia, and our automobile culture make community difficult, we need to make good on all that talk. Who can you reach out to today?