Day #023

Dublin, Ireland

The Silence that Follows a Man into Midlife

They say loneliness is the great epidemic of our age. Not the loud kind you feel as a teenager when you’re desperate to belong.

It’s the quiet kind that seeps into midlife.

It arrives – not with a roar – but with silence.

Like fog rolling into the city.

Lately, I’ve felt that fog settle in.

The landscapes of Portugal and Spain were breathtaking.

The ocean cliffs, the tiled streets, the hushed rhythm of churches older than continents.

The smell of salt – and the breeze of westward winds - along the Iberian Peninsula will never fade.

But when your leg refuses to cooperate and every walk feels impossible – you don’t see beauty so much as you watch the other people enjoy it.

From the outside looking in, you are a spectator witnessing families laughing at the water’s edge, couples wandering hand in hand, and friends creating new memories together.

And at tables for two – waiters simply clear the second placement.

And you're alone.

There were nights – admittedly more than I’d like to admit – when I sat lit by the glow of my laptop, my phone resting beside it, and I stared.

Not typing. Not scrolling.

Just staring.

The digital age has made it seem like we are never alone.

But in those moments – between the notifications, emails, and deliverables - the truth is plain: I don’t know who to call. I don’t know who to text.

I don’t want to be a burden.

So the night slips away – as they all do – and morning comes without anyone noticing I had been there at all.

In towns small and large – I’d feel the ache to turn and whisper, “Look at that” to someone who would see it with me.

That’s when you understand: Loneliness isn’t merely the absence of people – it’s the absence of a witness. The silence of no response.

The truth is, I’m in a friendship deficit. Not a famine – because the friends I do have are extraordinary, luminous souls – but a deficit all the same.

San Francisco is a city of comings and goings, and over the years, so many have gone.

And when I take inventory, I realize how few remain.

And the harder confession beneath that truth: Most of the friends I have now came through Jess. She wove the fabric – I simply stitched into it.

I can’t remember the last time I forged a friendship from scratch. Maybe a decade.

Maybe more.

By my age, many men have stopped calling their friends. They stop asking for help. They stop speaking their dreams aloud.

Careers consume them. Families depend on them. Failures haunt them.

So they fold into themselves, becoming smaller and smaller until they disappear behind the very lives they built.

When I look at the men I know, I see a pattern: Most of their friendships are tethered to high school or college. Bonds forged in the molten lava of adolescence and young adulthood – when highs felt higher, lows more devastating, and every vulnerability was shared without shame.

I didn’t have that.

High school was a prison for me, and I traded college dorm halls for the world, drifting between countries instead of anchoring myself to a single tribe.

My friendships from this time are like rare stones – precious, enduring – but few.

If you’re extroverted, your instinctive answer might be simple: “Put yourself out there. Friendship will follow.” But telling someone to “just make friends” is like telling a drowning man to “just swim harder.”

It ignores the weight, the exhaustion, and the strange heaviness of adulthood.

The unspoken truth is this: Making friends in the middle of life is hard.

Not impossible – just hard.

Because by now, our shapes are hardened. The clay has set.

We are less malleable, less forgiving of rough edges.

Where once we collided into each other with the serendipity of youth, now we pass by politely – wrapped in our own obligations, our own concentric circles of family and work and life.

Without having to defend myself against a gender war – this is where I think men often falter.

Having been surrounded by amazing women my entire life – I believe they are better at sustaining their circles and better at weaving new threads.

Men – in my experience – are more prone to retreat.

We confuse self sufficiency with strength – solitude with stoicism.

And little by little, we starve ourselves of communion until silence becomes unbearable.

Most men are never taught how to carry loneliness.

We were taught to endure it. To numb it. To wear it as armor.

But as the old Stoics knew: One man is no man.

This is the tragedy of men in their forties. It’s not that their souls are absent – rather, they're unseen.

Beneath work. Beneath responsibility. Beneath grief.

John O’Donahue once wrote, The soul is shy. When it is forced to show itself, it will run back into the shadows.

I noticed it most this past Christmas. For decades, my life had been chaos during the holidays – rooms overflowing with family and friends, dogs underfoot, unexpected visitors that bring both laughter and drama.

It was a Molotov Cocktail balanced between throw-away cameras, mayo-based casseroles, and NFL on every TV.

But – because it’s the only thing I knew – I just assumed it was normal.

This past Christmas - though - it was quiet. Painfully quiet.

No friends stopping by. No door swinging open with surprise guests. Just stillness.

I stood in a backyard with my dog, watching my breath in the cold, and it struck me: This is the life I chose.

No, not all at once, but after a thousand little decisions over decades.

And here I was: No one to call. No tribe to share the day with – realizing the choices that brought me here. Feeling alone.

I share this not to lament or depress – but as a mirror.

For those who feel the same silence in their lives and wonder if they are the only ones.

You’re not.

Loneliness is everywhere – sitting quietly besides millions of people who will never speak of it.

Because the hardest part isn’t actually the loneliness – it’s the shame in naming it. The shame in acknowledging it.

But here is the alchemy: If we choose, loneliness can be more than absence. It can be our teacher – it can prod us back toward old friends or push us into the future with new ones.

It can teach us to listen. To pay attention. To be present with others when they most need it.

If nothing else, it can remind us that our time here is short – and perhaps the most radical act left to us is to risk connection again.

I think there’s a bittersweet wisdom in that idea. It reminds us that friendship, connection, even love – these things are not rights guaranteed by existence.

They are gardens. They require tending.

Some of us – including myself – have neglected them too long. Now we must plant again – even if the soil feels barren.

Because – in the end – the cure for loneliness is not a crowd.

It’s the courage for one man to speak and another man to listen.

A single moment of being known. Shared together.

To let the soul step out of the shadows.

To let it be seen.