FFF: Alone

Just another Free Form Friday...


Alone.

What does that word mean to you?




It is a difficult subject for me to talk about to be honest with you.  I think that in frank discussions on the condition, you run the risk of venturing into the territories of adolescent, emo poetry.  Or worse, you just sound weak and needy.  Especially if you are a man.
It is however, fully possible for someone to be healthy, capable, effective, and still be lonely.  It is an honest emotion, one that I have before likened to being the solitary crew member of a space station, orbiting high above the world.





Writers and philosophers have tackled the subject numerous times.  Here are but a few of my favorite quotes regarding loneliness:

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me." --T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

"I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick."--Crooks in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

"No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world."--Aristotle

"Whenever I miss my friends I look up at the sky although I cant see them there but I feel happy that we are under the same sky."--William Shakespeare

"Life is very long when you're lonely."--Morrissey/The Smiths, "The Queen is Dead" (you knew I was going to work him in here.)




While we're in literary territory, I must say that as a writer I am not oblivious to the irony of my situation.  Many is the time that I have lamented on these pages how I just don't get people.  How I don't like interacting with people and much like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, long for a time when I can be solitary.

Well, be careful what you wish for.  You may get it...and it may be soul-crushing.

If it is a self-imposed exile, then what to do?  It is not so easy as leaving your mountaintop and returning to the settlement, expected to be greeted with open arms.  Mistakes and awkward remarks leave scars behind, just like nails pulled from wood.  There are amends to make in many cases if one is to cure their lonely condition.  In addition to that, I have learned that to successfully interact, one must give.  Offer yourself and your aid.  It can be as a service or just being available to listen...and that's the key, isn't it?  Being available.

So what is there to do if you are lonely because you miss one specific person?  Most of the time, the sad answer to that is "not much."  One method I suppose would be to try to be the type of person your subject wants.  The trick there is to make sure, doubly damn sure, you don't lose who you are in the process.
More effective than that I believe...work on yourself.  Better yourself.  Not only will you feel better about you and your own existence, not only will you become more powerful (not in the Donald-Trump-with-lots-of-motza way exactly but more in a self-empowered manner), you will become somebody others want to be with.  If not the one you miss, then with someone who truly values you as a friend or whatever.





Just looking at the math of it, it shouldn't be that hard to find one or another person with whom you're simpatico.  After all, there are about eight billion of us on this rock.

Why doesn't that make me feel any better?





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