Being Alone

There comes a time when you feel terribly alone. Not in the sense that you lock yourself in a room but in the state of utter dilemma, the way the life is happening and revolving around you. The ones that make you feel helpless even if you wish to change things around you. There comes a time when you feel alone, not necessarily in the sense that it makes you sad/depressed but that makes you feel so disconnected even from all the things you that once made you feel happier. Tell me, after years of working, does that salary still excites you? Does that bike/car you bought still add thrill in your daily life? Does partying every day still makes you feel that you are making the best of your life? Does traveling still make your jaw drop in awe and wonderment? In the quest to be happy, I tried everything fancy with the fun coupons I earned but it just brought more chaos, burning a deep hole within. But you just don’t pay attention to these things easily. You don’t introspect thinking it as silly. You just take it for granted and continue doing things that you think is making you happy. Gradually you become dependent, on the fun coupons, on family and friends, your girlfriend. You’re so dependent that you desperately need them. Because you don’t know how to spend time with yourself. You think what else is there to do? So you socialize, you travel and try to fill the empty cup with the sense of over-excitement, silly jokes and vain laughs over a few drinks, feeding your ego. The ego of ignorance. Yeah, it is bliss to live in that ignorance but for how long? And as soon as that party is over, as soon as you are done with your girlfriend, as soon as you’re back from an adventurous trip, you just fall in the same trap of searching for entertainment again. Oh, but you earn and there’s so much time you spend working. You think traveling, exploiting relationship, killing time with friends is your birthright. But imagine, how much it caught you in the habit of depending on other things for fun; be it substance, places or people. Do you even mind the kind of people you interact with daily? 8/10 people you meet might not even know what are you up to. Aren’t you meeting them because you think there’s nothing else to do? Their time and attention are enough to keep you entertained. Don’t you already know this friendship won’t last long? This dependency is nothing but a disease heavily masked by so-called fun, love, and friendship. Just for a moment imagine if all these are taken away from you. You’ve worked so hard just so that you never feel alone and you have someone/something to fall back on. Imagine to whom will you pour your heart out regarding your personal problems if not your girlfriend/best friend. Imagine if someone v close to you, without whom you could never ever imagine your life, suddenly dies. The problem is it doesn’t hit you hard until it truly happens. But all that you’re building now is bound to change, something /someone is bound to go away. The wonderful moments you’re living with your college/office friends that you wish stays the way it is forever are bound to end. And when you begin to lose it you feel terrible, even more so because you have invested so much time in building up your life with people/things around you that you are not ready to accept the truth that it’s finally gone and you’re all alone. Can you relate your meeting with old school/office friends after a long time with whom you keep rewinding the good old days and how you wish life to be fun and easy going the way it was back then? Why do you think life is more complicated now? Maybe because you’re trying to build the same comfort zone again by making new relationships and finding joy in more fancy things. In doing so, you may find it difficult to meet your own expectations by comparing it with older times/others and might even feel defeated. But, you just like to ignore these facts. When life pins you down, you don’t fight back, for you will always be defeated in one way or the other no matter how hard you try. The better way out is to accept your defeat, try to learn from what life has to teach you and deal with the problems by managing it efficiently. We all must arrive at this conclusion someday irrespective of being an introvert or extrovert, that we are all really alone. And you won’t be able to express this feeling to anyone around you. Some would accept it while some ignore it and continue to live a caged life with an invisible rope of habits tying around them. The more you try to pull it, the tighter it becomes. There’s no escape really. How can you escape from yourself? Perhaps, then you will realize how logical it is to invest your time, emotion and energy on that one thing that stays with you at the time of despair as well as happiness. That one thing that doesn’t necessarily have a fruitful outcome. That one thing which you can see every day, care for it, nurture it, see it slowly growing. That which is yours, with whom you fall so utterly in love that even if it looks ugly to the world you love it with all your heart, just like a mother loves her child unconditionally. If you crave enough just for that one thing which you can hold on forever, unshaken with your love for it amidst the crashing world, what would it be? Is it love, art or religion…? You have to be utterly honest with yourself to decide. You must learn to really choose amidst all the options presented to you, lest you fall in the same trap of habits again. Do you really want to become all those things you fancy? Think again.

Isn’t finding solace in passion, a way to find solace in your own self? Aren’t all these merely a means of expressing yourself? Perhaps the answer is always with you, the answer is You! And all other things are just the by-products reflecting your true nature. Perhaps this how it is, this is how it has always been- a journey of Self.