Sometimes when I travel to places that are not home, I get lonely. Is that weird? Many places in this world have struck my fancy so much so that I thought I was in love with those places, that I could be happy in those places (or could not be happy unless I moved to those places), that perhaps those places could become home. Paris comes to mind. Two years in the 17th arrondissement did not render the City of Light home, though I am still enamored of her. In love in the way that one remembers with nostalgia and longing, but it’s just a memory playing tricks on the mind making the brain believe that it was something that it was not or could never be.

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The Grande Dame Paris did not turn out to be home. Loneliness crept in and made herself comfortable in the midst of millions of people. Other places have proven the same, even as I trotted the globe, even as I returned to America in search of my place.

This writer is not lonely when alone. Lonesomeness does not stem from being alone, it, rather, flourishes when one is not where one belongs. Physically, mentally, or spiritually.

Look at the water, Gentle Reader. If you were present, you would hear only the sounds of God – birds chirping, water lapping, frogs croaking. Who could be lonely when surrounded by celestial voices? This is the moment that says, “All shall be well.” Because, if one looks at everything from God’s point of view, doubt dissipates. The cacophony of humanity is doused by the melody of heaven on earth. People’s injuries, deceptions, selfishness, and shortsightedness cannot hold a candle to the kind of light that shines here now.

This is my favorite tableau: the light of the setting sun burnishing the topmost foliage of the trees across the cove, while the lower leaves are bathed in the shadow of nightfall – simultaneously mirrored in the water below. Gold relinquishes its hold in favor of deepest forest greens. Those hues do not harbor loneliness.

Look around you, I would tell Granddaughter. Lonely does not live here. The light shines right here, reflected from within the soul. Judging from her smile, I think she already knows.