In his Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller writes a chapter on being alone. In it he describes an astronaut that had a special suit that could keep him alive without food, water, or oxygen. One day the astronaut is cast out into space. After being scared for awhile, he calms down when he realizes that his suit will keep him alive. But after orbiting around the earth for decades, he died a very lonely and crazy man - just a shell with hardly a spark for a soul. In space, he forgot what it was like to be human.
He concludes that if loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell. We should have people around us bugging us and getting under our skin - without which we cannot grow in God nor as a human. God wants us together, living among one another...and we need other people in our life in order to be healthy.
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