The Lonesome & The Lonely

The satellite is a solitary machine. That single aspect of my handle might be the one that carries the most weight, the most significance. I'm a solitary creature. It's my preference. I'd be more than happy to take up the title of loner if it weren't for the confusion surrounding it. I think most people feel loners are lonely people. I make a differentiation between the lonesome and the lonely. The latter being victims of circumstance and the former, beneficiaries of consequence. At its root it's a matter of choice. The lonely suffer and endure solitude while the lonesome bask in it. I bask. I choose to be alone. I love to be alone. I've mentioned some of the reasons why this is the case. I don't hate people. In fact, I love them. Maybe it's largely a force of habit? I think not, but I did decide a very long time ago that it was important to seek out solitude whenever I could and to make the most of it.

I've felt that many of the most tedious and tiresome people I've met have also been the most social. I created a correlation there. So in the interest of being interesting I ran away from the crowd. I think being alone affords one many opportunities, largely developing and refining the self. Though, the most extreme cases might benefit from just being aware that there is a self. It's so hard to discern a singular voice within a cacophonous crowd. Overtime I think you can lose your voice. The inclination is to harmonize with the social choir rather than act against it. This is the homogeny of the hive mind. Though I don't mean to suggest that it's important or vital to act against something for the sheer sake of being disruptive. You might find that your individual voice is in fact in tune with the social choir. I only think there's a problem when you deprive yourself of that discovery, and making it requires solitude.

The most social people I've met fear solitude. That, I never understand. Being alone, that phrase, strikes people differently. To fear it, I think means being at a loss? Not being with someone. To own it should mean being with yourself. There's this discrimination between not having and having. Losing and winning. Negative and positive. I ultimately feel this fear of being alone is a fear of the self. It has less to do with others (not having them) and more to do with your self (owning it). Hyper-sociability is born out of this fear, I think, to help distract and avoid. The noise of the crowd masks the whining, squealing, crying, etc. Ironically enough, I think it's in this strain of sociability that you'll find the most lonely. I think of song birds without voices and wings, birds who've never known the power and beauty of their own songs, songs that give flight to their souls.

So much of being alone (for me) has meant introspection, refinement, development and specialization. To be at odds with those principles is beyond me, I can't fathom it. But in the same way that I've taken a critical eye to hyper-sociability I think I should toward hyper-solitude. Extremes are rarely a good thing. So I certainly don't feel that being social is a bad thing. I only felt like waving the banner and trumpeting the virtues of the lonesome because we get a bad wrap. There's a stigma attached to being alone where I think it should not exist. Though I could be falling into a trap. The purpose for me is to muddy the waters. All I'm really saying is being social shouldn't appear altogether healthy. And being lonesome shouldn't appear altogether unhealthy. But one's more likely to perceive sociability as such (healthy) and being alone, not. There's a problem there. It's something that's been at the forefront of my mind the more I dive further into the Net. There's this warped tendency to evangelize the social web. It's something that rubs me the wrong way. But maybe that's something I should save for another day. Right now I have to be alone. ;)


DS333, receding.