Solitude is the feeling and knowledge that one is alone, alienated from the world and oneself. All men, at some moment in their lives, feel themselves to be alone, and they are. To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Octavio Paz said that, a hundred years ago in 1950. That it's that knowledge, that we're all alone, that makes us different from, say monkeys. I don't think I've ever felt that way as strongly as I've been feeling these past few days. The no-work-to-keep-me-occupied might contribute, but I don't think that's it. Sometimes you look at your life and you start to ask yourself other than your family who do you really have? Then it gets more and more apparent that friendships are more a function of convenience than a lasting bond, and then you get invited to a wedding by people you used to know, who used to be like you once, but who now seem to have found the ultimate loves of their lives and are moving forward, and you're still at the exact same spot you were at back in those days. And you feel all of a sudden alone. In the midst of a crowd, all these people around you, but alone. I've never really known why it's this way, but I find that people treasure others more when they're there by choice, so we tend to take our families for granted coz we know they're always gonna be there and they can't just suddenly choose to stop being related to us.
I have a history of holding back and letting go. Hiding behind societal labels and my brains and books and movies and rock music. I find meaning in all of these things that I can do by myself so that I don't have to seek out companionship, or so that I can explain my state to anyone who might want to know (although no one ever does so...). I've been looking for a house to live in and despite the obvious upsides (not the least of which is there are no one-person houses being built any more) I won't even consider cohabiting with a housemate. I joined this church thing they call a life group which is supposed to be like an accountability circle with people you come from the same area with and in that way sort of bring the whole church experience closer to home (literally), but I still don't feel at home as I think I should be, or as everyone else seems to, like four months down the line. An old best friend got engaged, ENGAGED, and didn't even think to share - had to find out through the grapevine. There's this girl that makes my heart stop but I sometimes don't feel as though I'd be willing to do anything to get her. When I do that Tim LaHaye test, it comes out phlegmatic, every time. I've been described as eclectic before, which now that I think about it may actually have been code for weird.
But that's not the only reason I'm sad. I feel as though my dream life is further away than I used to think it was, and it's gonna take longer than I'd anticipated. And it's not just the Beamer (TM), it's the whole visibility aspect, standing out from the crowd, the power potential that being a man of means brings with it. I seem to just be following the well-worn path to success that everyone else follows, and so most recently I've even started building "savings for a rainy day." The thing about this well-worn path is that you're not the only one on it. There's no uniqueness, no room for innovation, no opportunity for being extraordinary. I can't even sneeze at 11.30 unless our manual says it's OK! Ya, I know, people always say if you believe it you can become it, but I don't think it's quite that simple. I think we get an unbalanced picture of success stories because we never hear about all the hoops the person had to jump through to get where they are. It's made to seem like Bill Gates just dreamed of a world with desktops running software and out popped Windows. No mention is made of the 12 years he and Paul worked out of his garage, or the fact that Trump actually got in so deep over his head that he had to file for bankruptcy once, or the year Steve Jobs spent sleeping on friends' floors in college surviving on the 5ct deposit you get back when you return Coke bottles. Noooo. We just look at the iPod and Trump Plaza and the Xbox and say "That's all it takes - a dream." Try as I might I can't seem to be able to figure out how to get from here to there, or even where "there" is. I just know how I want my life to be like when I've arrived.
When everything has left you, you're alone; but when you have left everything behind, there is solitude. It's said that in solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself. Only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to deal with our eternal aloneness. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "In the solitude to which man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him." If this feeling I get lately is the real thing, and not just plain old loneliness, I hope I get all these life lessons about my inner being from it. If not, well, at least I hope that when it's broken, it'll be coz it's been replaced by something that'll last.
END
0 comments:
Post a Comment