The Word Is Lonely:
The word is lonely. What the word means is another matter. Kind of a complicated multifaceted, double-entendre. There is always the philosophical question if you can ever be happy if you have never been sad, if you can ever be displeased if you have never been pleased, and I guess if you can ever be lonely if you have never been crowded. I assume here that everyone gets lonely in some form or another. A person could be lonely for a lot of reasons---a lost loved one, a lost friend, a lost pet, a lost job, a lost home, a lost spouse, or just a lack of friends. And then there are people who seem to have no reason to be lonely, but they are---and those who should seem to be lonely but are not. Probably those who are most capable of creating their own amusement and activities are least likely to be lonely. After all they are least dependent on others for mental stimulation. Could it be that those who go through the entire day with a cell phone, IPOD, video games, or internet/TV screens plastered on their face might be the loneliest of all?
The word lonely is one of those words with which you can do about anything---twist it this way or that, view it from one angle or another, but ultimately fail if you substitute one person for another. I never know whether to envy those who depend upon, and surround themselves with, others around the clock. Is it better to be gregarious or aloof? Maybe this relates to some sort of innate social ability. There is no question but that I tend to fall on the shallow end of the sociability pool. Nothing too unique there, but I do come with a twist---I like to study people, and can tolerate a wide range of personalities. But, for the most part, it has to be from a distance. Perhaps most people are more likable from a distance. Ask the divorced.
People who chase after companionship and those who defend against it, by definition must do so by preference. I suppose there are plenty who chase after companionship but can't find much of it, and those who seek solitude who rarely succeed in getting much of it. I don't think one can really state to be sociable is good and to be aloof is bad. It must relate to some sort of comfort level. My mother couldn't go enough places and my father couldn't not go to enough places. I seem to be some kind of cross. I tend to go to the same places too much but to some other places not enough.
It would not be my place to explain the needs of those who cherish constant company. This seems the kind of area where everything is relative amid the absence of any best way or good way or bad way etc. But the eternal 'wonderer' here ponders how the word lonely applies to these two groups---even though the two groups are quite diverse within their own groups. I know for my own part, I am never less alone than when in nature by myself, and never more alone than in the midst of an obligatory group gathering which I reluctantly agreed to attend. It is not that I sit in a corner by myself (although I have done that too)---I can be quite gregarious with an effort. But for the most part, despite the claims otherwise, I find most group gatherings superficial ego tripping image projecting circuses. Everyone is projecting whatever image they are choosing to project, rarely is anything discussed in depth (that is impossible, someone will always change the subject), and witticisms flow like water over the Hoover Dam. With me it is even more complex. I would guess like at least 80% of things I agree to attend I never do. When the time comes, I rarely want to go. But if I go, in most cases, I have a good time. Yet that pattern has stayed with me all my life.
But back to the word lonely. I think there are two kinds of lonely: the kind of lonely where you want company and the kind of lonely where you miss someone or something. In the latter case it doesn't do any good to have someone else around since it is someone else or something else you miss. If you lose a lover it doesn't much help to be at a party surrounded by other large clumps of other people. The list of people whose memory makes us lonely gets longer and longer with age. If you live long enough you have a lot to miss. This kind of lonely is not always unpleasant. If the memories are good, then the loneliness is good---or at least meaningful. There are those who, for one reason or another, have few good memories. These people most likely are the loneliest in the sadist sense of the word lonely. If you don't have a lot of good memories as you age, then what really do you have?
Much of life is a choice between doing and thinking. Of course it is always some kind of mixture but I think most can be put in one category or the other---for the most part. The doers are happiest when doing. I know, Duh!. If they are stopped from doing, they immediately become lonely. Thinkers need space to think. They need time to think. If you take away their space and time to think they are lonely, or more precisely frustrated. Yes, one can certainly be lonely in a crowd. And for different reasons. I don't think one can really be objective about loneliness. In the last analysis what counts is to what extent a person is content. I know people who are gregarious who are content and people who are aloof who are content. Which is better seems a rather witless waste of time.
I wonder which group handle aging the best? The gregarious or the aloof? I selfishly hope it is the aloof---after all, the older you get the more time you have to think, even if it is increasingly muddled thinking. I suppose at some point, if you live long enough, you just sit minus the thinking. When your thinking deteriorates to the point your former being is hardly existent, what is the proper word for it? Your body is not dead, but your former 'being' is gone. If there is an afterlife, maybe your being goes there long before your body dies. Wouldn't that be a funny Deistical trick----to leave a cell functioning body around for right wing religious fanatics to fawn over. Well, funny to me anyway. Science knows a lot about the body, but how much do any of us know about our 'being'. People think science has all the answers but that is a simplistic illusion. Science tells us cause and effect according to natural laws. But only our own 'being', with our own minds, can understand reasons for anything. Try using science to explain beauty or music, or honesty, or just about anything else that gives real meaning to our lives. We can push molecules and atoms around every which way, but this will never explain any of the aforementioned. In the end materialism isn't the end all of anything. Which is not to say I intend to sell my large screen TV. In a sense big screen TVs have always been around. It is called LIFE---if some couch potatoes can remember when they had one.
