Please don’t tell me if The Martian makes it home or the Gone Girl is gone for good. For reasons I can’t explain I read novels 10 to 15 years after they are on the bestseller list. I just read A Man Called Ove, a 2012 Swedish bestseller with a 2013 English translation.
The book became a Swedish film, then Tom Hanks starred in the American version, A Man Called Otto. Hanks’ Otto is a lonely, grumpy, routine-obsessed widower who plans to end his life after losing his wife to cancer. Otto tries to hang himself, use carbon monoxide and jump in front of a train, but his new neighbor, Marisol, keeps interrupting.
She says, “You’re really bad at dying, you know that?”
Brett Younger
The story flashes back to scenes of young, lonely Otto meeting and falling in love with Sonya, whose presence filled him with hope, and whose death destroyed him. Otto now believes everyone is an idiot.
Marisol says, “My father used to smile like that.”
Otto responds, “I’m not smiling.”
“Exactly.”
Otto asks: “Why can’t people mind their own business? Idiots. Interrupting me at every turn. The more they babble, the more they drown out the memory of her voice. I don’t want to clear Sonya from my life. There was nothing before her, and there’s nothing after!”
To which Marisol replies, “I’m something.”
The Mendes family slowly pulls Otto out of his isolation. He helps them with home repairs and babysitting.
Marisol asks Otto to give her driving lessons. She wants to drive an automatic, but he insists she learn how to drive a stick.
When she gets frustrated, Otto says: “You have given birth to two children. You have come here from a country very far away. You learned a new language. You got yourself an education and a nitwit husband and you are holding that family together. You will have no problem learning how to drive. The world is full of complete idiots who have managed to figure it out, and you are not a complete idiot. So, clutch, shift, gas, drive.”
Marisol introduces Otto to Salvadoran food. The daughters start calling him “Abuelo Otto.” He is not sure how it happens, but Otto gets a cat. He helps a teenager deliver papers. He takes Marisol’s family to his wife’s grave and introduces them to Sonya. Otto begins to feel like he belongs.
“I’ve been an idiot. I got so wrapped up in my own troubles, I stopped thinking of anyone else.”
When he gets near the end, Otto laments: “I’ve been an idiot. I got so wrapped up in my own troubles, I stopped thinking of anyone else. And I figured they weren’t thinking about me. Friends shouldn’t do that. So this isn’t easy to say after all this time. But I’m sorry.”
We don’t have to end up sorry for our loneliness. We can do something about it. We can read a book about friendship. We can remember falling in love. We can fall in love. We can stop thinking everyone is an idiot. We can smile. We can help our neighbors. We can loan tools. We can babysit. We can share food. We can stop being so wrapped up in our own troubles that we stop thinking of anyone else. We can find our way to community.
Loneliness shows up for most of us. Not many always feel accepted. We maintain a positive front and try not to pay too much attention to our longing for friendship. We know the loneliness of a co-worker making it clear we are not friends like we thought. We just happen to work in the same place.
We know the loneliness of unfulfilling days. The glories of motherhood give way to baby-related chores that become a lonely routine. The subject we loved in college becomes a lonely job that takes all our time. We watch our friends pair off, move away and build lives that do not include us. We wake up at 3 a.m. and can’t go back to sleep. Loneliness leads to scrolling on our phone, or maybe scrolling on our phone leads to loneliness. It is a cycle. We hope our loneliness will fade away, but we keep longing for friends.
Some feel lonelier in church than anywhere else. We pretend we are happier than we are. We act as if everything is fine.
Every Sunday, lonely people go to church and pretend their lives are wonderful. “How are you?” is followed by “Fine” even when it is not true. The church is meant to be a refuge for the lonely.
God’s church is for everyone who needs friends. Our loneliness does not have to be hidden. What Robert Frost said about home is even more true of Christ’s church. The church is the place where, when we have to go there, they have to take us in.
We need the church because we need people who know who we are, treat us with kindness and let us be kind. We need people to listen to us, talk about things that matter and trust us. We need to spend time with children and senior adults, to be around those with a deep sense of spirituality and to serve those who need our help.
Someone should have invited Otto to church.
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.