The bearable aloneness of being

I have always been a loner. Lone child. Shy. Older parents. Generation(s) gap. Misunderstood. It has taken me a lot of time to come to terms with this. My best and most loyal friends, till date, have been tobacco and alcohol. They refuse to let go of me inspite of my best efforts and I have more or less decided that health permitting I shall try and reciprocate their attachment to me. The rest of the world waits for the slightest affront, real or otherwise, and I am one more “friend” down. These things have stopped bothering me any longer. For an inherently lazy person like me, it is actually too much of an effort to keep these friendships going. The demands are far too many and the returns on investment (time and money) are meagre. It is not that I am any different with my relatives. The scene there is even worse and thankfully the fact that I have married out of the religion helps me tremendously here. My relatives (at least most of them) will not be caught dead anywhere near me.

What all this has done is earned me, in my opinion the undeserved, sobriquet of “selfish”. And I absolutely love this. To be honest, I am yet to come across a selfless person in my life. I have been witness to random acts of selflessness, not a whole lot of them, but enough to understand what that entails. But a selfless human being, no, not as yet. I have been kind of led to believe that human beings are social animals. Therefore anyone who prefers his/ her own company is initially labelled a queer and if the trait continues later in life as well is labelled selfish. Friends call me out for dinner and I excuse myself saying that I rather cuddle up with my rum/ vodka, cigarattes and a book and presto, I am being selfish. Not feeling upto (read feeling lazy) attending a collague’s daughters’s 3rd birthday on a Sunday and there you have, further proof of my selfishness.

I have realised that rarely do people enjoy their own company. Forget enjoying, the thought of being with oneself downright scares, intimidates and overwhelms.To them, I try and explain that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. Not to say that one way or the other is the “right” way to be. Each to himself and I also keep reminding myself of the Yiddish proverb “If all of us were to pull in the same direction the world would keel over”. Over a period of time, all of us find our own comfort zones and as long as what we like is not criminal or illegal in nature, please let us be. The counter to this would be some pyschobabble that exhorts people to get out of their comfort zones and experience the thrill of doing something different, giving little credence to that fact that one lifetime is not enough to explore our own intrinsic construct, leave alone trying to be something or someone else.

It has taken me a fair amount of time to come to terms with myself. When I was growing up, I tended to look at myself rather strangely, unable to comprehend this disposition of wanting to be alone. It was only after I decided to accept rather than question did I acknowledge that it is fine to be different and it also helped that I did meet a few like minded people. The very knowledge of their existence gave me comfort and solace.

But the clincher has been some of the experiences that I have gone through over the years. In my book, at the end of the day (and even during it), all you have is yourself and the earlier this realisation dawns the simpler does life become. The weight of expectations from others and the subsequent, almost inevitable, disappointment that virtually crushes people can be possibly avoided with this realisation. In my own case, I can vouch for the fact that I have been all alone during the darkest periods in my life and I have survived. This particular aloneness that I am referring to should not be confused with the physical presence of people around (in our country there is no shortage of bodies to envelope you, irrespective of the situation). The reference is completely to the mindspace that is shared or otherwise.

My predeliction for aloneness is also borne out by my areas of interest. There is nothing more I like than running and running, especially of the long distance variety, is a loner’s pursuit. Reading again is best done in one’s own company. My favorite sport is cricket, which although a team sport offers the most scope and space for an individual to express himself fully and at times, “selfishly” ( we don’t need to look beyond Sir Geoffrey Boycott for irrefutable evidence in this regard).

At the same time, have I not had fun with my friends, oh yes I have. Do I lock myself up in a room all day and keep muttering and mumbling to myself, not at all. Am I a maladjusted, anti-social psychopath? I definitely don’t think so. I like myself almost to the extent of being called narcissistic (add that to selfish) and make no bones about the joys of my own company. I have invariably been let down by people close to me and the ones that have not lare the ones with whom I have no relationship. Do I need to say more about the delights of aloneness. And at the end of all this, if I do need a crutch, I have my tobacco and/ or alcohol !!