High functioning individuals (young, strong, healthy, intelligent, talented, rich) often find it hard to tolerate low functioning (old, weak, sick, stupid, helpless, poor) individuals. Low functioning people tend to group together, creating a satisfying community (they cling to one another in a herd). High functioning people are over-sensitive (like predators) and so are forced (by their own intolerance, judgmentalism, impatience) to live alone.

While it is good to have the gifts of youth, strength, health, intelligence, wealth and talent, it is better to hide them or use these gifts to help others. If we use these gifts for our own benefit, we will soon find out that they can be a curse, pushing us into exile due to our own increasingly high standards. High functioning folk are almost impossible to live with. Only through strong, painful doses of humiliation can high functioning individuals become sensitized to the feelings of others (to the pains and humiliations accepted as a matter of course by low functioning people, these pains and humiliations never experienced by high functioning individuals). This humility can either be self-imposed, or it will be imposed by God. Our choice. It is better to humble ourselves than to be forcibly humiliated.

If we ignore God's messages, the loneliness of self-imposed solitary exile will become our prison. But therein lies the key! The pain of loneliness teaches us. We must recognize that in pain the Lord is teaching us; we must contritely accept the rebuke and mend our prideful ways. That is always what is best for us.

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