On the Christmas eve morning in 2022, I landed in Budapest to spend the holiday season with my partner’s family. This Christmas was different. It was the first one we spent with his 84-year old lovely grandma post-Covid, and I wasn’t thinking as much as I used to in the gifts I would give, but rather on how much this gathering meant and how lucky we were to still be able to spend time with our loved ones.
At 11 AM, we found ourselves on our way to the Airbnb we rented, and we were starving. Almost every place to eat around the Buda castle, where we were staying, was already closed. This didn’t seem unusual for a 24th of December. End of the day, everyone was supposed to be having quality family time. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help to bring to memory for how many that relatively simple thing wouldn’t be possible anymore. It was also the first time my brother was going to go through Christmas without his father, a hard-working, generous man who Covid suddenly took away from us in December 2021.
After wandering a bit, we found a rather tourist-trap open-air Christmas market next to the Chain Bridge, where we bought a túrós rétes and a kolbász. Soon after we started eating, a wasted man came to us asking for money. «Usual homeless beggar, poor guy» I thought for myself. I couldn’t properly reply we didn’t have any money for him with my basic Hungarian, but my partner and a friend who picked us at the airport did. That man, who was supposed to leave after the negative, replied something that sticks with me until today: “I understand you don’t have money, but can we at least talk? It’s Christmas, and I’m alone and sad. 30 years living in this city, completely alone”. We were speechless. Not long after, one of the waiters came and threatened to beat him hard if he bothered any customer again. A long silence invaded our small open-air table, and I found myself feeling pity for that little wasted man I mistook for one homeless more. How many times have we seen chronic loneliness in disguise? In the drug addict, in the workaholic, in the compulsive shopper, in the big families, all chasing damaging habits to beat loneliness, which seems unbeatable. What can we possibly offer to our significant others to alleviate that burden and what can they possibly ask us? An eye-opening reflection hit me at that moment: not all things that count can be counted, not even for the poorest, not even with the biggest handout. It still beats me how we can start being part of the fight against loneliness, a silent and powerful enemy of our humanity.
We continued to eat with apparent normality, but I was visibly affected by this incident. I happened to be missing the rest of my family on this day, so I couldn’t help to feel empathetic with the 30-year-old lonely man. Not long after, a drunk man apparently in his 70’s, who was walking by close to us, started shouting: “I hate this! There are no longer Hungarians in this city, only slanting eyes suckers!” as a caravan of Asian tourists approached the market where we were. I couldn’t help but wonder where the xenophobic outrage of this man in Christmas eve was coming from. Where he and his family victims of the communism era? Where they forced to separate from each other and give up their possessions? To what extent do Hungarians collectively feel neighbor countries took away from them in the past world wars? Ultimately, I wondered whether this man was also a lonely in disguise, looking to belong and bond, craving for company and camaraderie in a city that moved on, that now feels so strange.
A last reflection for all of us: when was the last time you spot loneliness in a friend, a relative, even yourself? While it’s completely normal to feel this way from time to time, let’s think together about how we can fight chronic, persistent loneliness around us. Small gestures can be game changers: smile, sit together for lunch, try to genuinely know the next lonely in disguise that crosses your path. You might make their day!
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Random Lessons 
Reblogged this on Título del sitio.
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I have never traveled like you. I mere set foot over both the northern and southern borders of the USA in my whole life. So, I am not as worldly as you.
But I can’t help remembering HOME, the home I grew up in. A very American, middle-class, white and conservative home. And in that home, I was afforded my own room. When I was with my family, I was lost in my headphones. I could be lonely right while I was with my closest family, how much more when with friends and acquaintances?
If I had grown up in the 1870s and 80s, odds are good I would have shared a bed with two or more brothers, a bathwater with six or more siblings. I probably would not have “grown up and left home” at all, but likely would stay and work the same land as my father and his father. I might never leave the house of my birth, and if I did, I would likely live in the same village, marry a girl (hopefully not my cousin) that I grew up knowing all my life.
It sounds a little dull in some important ways, but it sounds so profoundly connected like I can only imagine.
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Thanks for sharing your experience. Loneliness connects humanity in mysterious ways.
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