All The Lonely People

Remember these lines from the 1966 Beatles’ song, “Eleanor Rigby”?…

Ah, look at all the lonely people:
Eleanor Rigby, picks up the rice
in the Church where a wedding has been,
lives in a dream …
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

“Eleanor Rigby” was part of a trend in contemporary popular music which puts the listener in a restless, wistful, searching mood, and it has been influencing the lives of millions of young people and others for years. It’s still getting to people right where they really are. It’s still raising the question of what it means to be a fulfilled person, because most of it is about unfulfilled persons. The sad, sometimes hauntingly beautiful images we see in such songs are about people in loneliness; people in estrangement; people who have a deep longing somewhere inside for something they haven’t yet found; people…