By Joseph Mbazzi Muguluma
Loneliness does not announce its arrival. It comes disguised as discipline, spirituality, independence and peace. You wake up, pray, work, exercise and repeat the routine, believing you have mastered life.
Meanwhile, years disappear, friends marry, children grow, and you remain a prisoner of your own company.
Then one morning, BAM! You discover that the clock has not been waiting. Your emotions have grown cold, love feels foreign, and the speed of life has left you behind.
THE TRAGEDY OF MWANYINAZE NANTONGO
Mwanyinaze Nantongo, we remember your beauty at Magwa Secondary School. Vehicles waited at the gate to take you home. Boys fought to carry your books. Buddu celebrated you when you joined Makerere’s Mary Stuart Hall.
But somewhere between prayer at St Augustine Chapel and professional success at Bauman, you chose independence over companionship.
Now, at 55, you have returned to disturb Mummy at the clan house. Why not remain at Jjajja Seruma’s home in Mutundwe? Perhaps the silence of your own house has become unbearable.
The beauty remains, but where is the companionship that could have grown alongside it?
THE ORACLE’S WARNING FROM ZAMBIA
In Lusaka, I learnt this lesson painfully. Three years alone in Green Park Houses along Kafue Road, following a disciplined routine of Mass, work and gym, gradually changed me.
Five years later, emotional connection had become difficult. Food, Mosi lager and Cognac filled evenings that conversation should have occupied.
I returned to Uganda after 12 years, struggling to reconnect with people I once knew.
Priests explained that celibacy demands a specific spiritual calling, structured discipline and community support. Their lives are not simply exercises in isolation.
LIFE WAS NEVER DESIGNED FOR PERMANENT SOLITUDE
In Eden, Adam had everything, yet God declared that being alone was not good. Noah’s Ark preserved life through pairs.
Our traditions, too, celebrate companionship.
My son, spirituality is not a substitute for human connection. Independence is not intimacy, and solitude is not always peace.
Love is not the enemy of ambition. Sometimes, it is what keeps us human.
