Lonliness does strange things to people.

There is a preview out for a movie coming sometime this fall. I don't remember the name of the movie but it stars Ryan Gosling as an intensely lonely person who brings home a date to meet his sister and her husband one night - only the "date" is actually a blow up doll that this lonely guy sees as being completely real. It sounds like a perfect set up for a bizarre Farrely Brother's comedy - a send up of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner perhaps. But the preview makes it clear that this is not supposed to be a comedy, but a drama about how lonliness can really mess with people's heads.

We, of course, are huge fans of Wilson - Tom Hanks' volleyball buddy from Cast Away. Trapped on a desert island for several years, Tom Hanks' character becomes best friends with Wilson, the volleyball, and comes to see this inanimate object as his only friend. This should seem like its pretty looney, and indeed it is, but think of all the other times we delude ourselves out of lonliness. There's the relationship we thought we had, but it was entirely one sided. Or the imaginary friend we had when we were kids. Or the many myriad fantasies that run through our head with real people who are somehow nicer, kinder, and incredibly more beautiful or handsome in real life. Quite frankly, the real world suffers by comparison with the Wilson's of our world.

I know intimately the thoughts, feelings, and relationships of all my characters and I like to spend time with them every once in a while. They are both more interesting to me than real people, less fussy to deal with, and, ultimately, always do what I say - most of the time. But as with anything, fantasy characters can sometimes come strangely close to real life people. It is easy to become obsessed with these fantasy people, easy to defend their actions, to defend their words, to defend their beliefs over the objections of others. It is easy to fall in love with something and someone you are never going to meet - because they do not exist.

How far is it, then, to go from a place where you dress up in a costume for a convention to the point where you start to believe that you are actually in that world. That is perhaps something for a psychologist to answer.

Would that the real world were as easy to overcome lonliness as the world of fantasy - where lonliness could disappear as quickly as talking to someone, phoning someone, or seeing someone on the street and saying hello. There is no rejection in the fantasy world.

In that, I wonder how much the longing we have for the fantasy world is a direct correlation for our longing for a closer walk with God. The real world will never be able to compete with a fantasy place that marches to the beat of our own drum, but the fantasy place can never possibly compete with walking with Him in divine glory.

There is one cure for lonliness and several providers. Let us all make sure that our cure isn't made of plastic and air.