When a cat just won’t do

It hits at the oddest of times. It might be in a crowded room, or while driving the car, or surrounded by friends and family. It creeps up the back of my spine and digs in just behind my heart. It’s a familiar foe that knows me well. It conjures up past wrongs and present divides and turns them into a single word. Isolation.

And with that word comes all the fears of standing alone, with no one to care. It’s silly really, the devil’s best tool. It’s not a matter of numbers, it’s a matter of behavior. I’m not alone, but then again, I keep mentally and spiritually choosing the same path wide enough for only one.

The answer isn’t just companionship, otherwise a cat would fit the bill.

I don’t think I’m the only one. Look around and you know that we are isolated from others. Sure, we live in cities and jostle for position, but we do it alone. We have built fences around our castles, avoiding any neighborly contact with the push of a garage door opener. We enter these castles eating quick heat dinners and hovering over computer screens with no connection to our fellow man.

While money buys automobiles, homes, and clothes, it ultimately buys isolation. Just think, if all our possessions were to be stripped away, what would we have?  We would have to learn interdependence on each other. We would learn the meaning of borrowing a cup of sugar, of helping a neighbor out of a predicament. We could again experience “community.”

Remember the Iraqi man who hid 22 years in a wall that he built inside his home, running from Saddam Hussein’s death squads? But he is like so many of us. Rather than face the world, dangerous and frightening it may be, we choose to live in our own prisons. The light of day passes with nary a nod of acknowledgement, for we are captives of the dark.

Many of us try to fill the hollow ache inside with activity, filling our waking moments with parties and leisure and travel. Reaching out to fill the holes in our souls, we find nothing. 


I’ve pushed people away, not wanting them to share my pain … or my joy. I dodged the dance because I don’t want to be revealed. I’ve run when all I had to do was stand. No wonder I hear that voice.

It’s all so unnecessary. Right Fluffy?

“A man of many companions will come to ruin. But there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18.10 
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