Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Life, an Essentially Solitary Journey

More and more I am impressed with the fact that although there are six billion plus people on the planet, we’re all very lonely. Now that I’m retired and I’ve got plenty of time, and I’ve got a few years behind me, and therefore a few insights to interpret what I am seeing, I look around and see a world of desperately lonely people. For most of our journey we are trying so hard to please everybody, to be the people that we’re supposed to be, instead of the people that we just are. Working that hard means you really aren’t focused much on others. It’s one of the ultimate ironies of life, of course, because most of us are surrounded and overwhelmed by people from the time we enter the world, and yet, we don’t really connect very often. We’re fortunate if there is one other person at any given moment that we would really enjoy being with.

Most of the time, we’re compromising, aren’t we? We’re putting up with this frustration or that irritating habit that somebody has, or we’re going to a movie with someone, and it’s not really the movie that we want to see, but it’s the movie we’re going to because they want to see it. There isn’t really a lot of perfect meshing with other people, and I can see more everyday that this is due to the fact that God has created each one of us to be unique. There’s nobody out there who’s just like you are, likes just exactly the foods that you do, and the music and the movies that you do, and has the same occupation, things that you do with your time, your skills, so we’re alone, even when you’re with others.

Looking back now, to me the scary thing about being in relationships or being married, one of those legal commitment that means, “Yeah, we’re legally bound to this one,” is that it doesn’t take very long to see how different we all really are and that there really isn’t all that much time after the honeymoon is over that we really want to spend with this other person. We’re lonely, but we’re not that lonely, and so a lot of us, as time goes on, find that we’re spending more and more time by ourselves because the only other person that is just exactly like I am – is me! A lot of us find that in the long run, in this journey, the only really satisfying lifelong companion we have is our self.

The thing that makes the end of our journey so wonderful is the discovery, after a lifetime, that we’re going to be OK as long as we’ve got our self. If you are one of those individuals who’s blessed to be pretty much alone in the world at the end of your journey, it can be wonderful to know that you’re not going to have to spend most of the time that you have left in this world hanging around people that you may love but you really don’t like very much, and you really don’t like very much of their company, but for one reason or another, you’re stuck with it. So for those of you who are surrounded by people and enjoy kids and grandkids and work and lots of people around you all the time, don’t feel sorry for those of us who don’t. Most of us really enjoy being alone, without being besieged by all of those people that we have to keep pleasing.

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