[acb-hsp] Being Alone

[Mmorrowfarrell at aol.com]

In my experience and hence in my opinion everyone stands alone.  Even  if 
you have been in a relationship for a very long time you are still ultimately 
 alone.  We must all rely on ourselves in the end. This is my opinion.  
Signed, Mary Morrow-Farrell, Philadelphia PA.
 
 
In a message dated 8/11/2012 10:06:40 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
paltschul at centurytel.net writes:

The  Trials of Being Alone After a Big Change in Your Life
Salon By Tracy  Clark-Flory August 6, 2012
I recently went through a breakup.   It was the worst -- they 
always are -- but as I wrestled with sadness over  the end of the 
relationship, another perplexing challenge arose: how to be  
alone.
I've been through a million -- OK, three -- breakups  before.  
I've spent plenty of time single in between.  I thought  I'd be 
good at this alone thing by now.  I'm an only child, for  crying 
out loud.  Instead, on the heels of another split, I'm amazed  at 
how difficult just being by myself can be.  I have friends --  
they are wonderful -- but I feel a suffocating solitude at the 
end of  the night, in the morning or at any moment of the day that 
isn't scheduled  with distraction.  It wasn't this way when I was 
coupled.  Just  the knowledge that I had "a person" to call my own 
(even though I know in  my bones that you can never truly call 
another person "your own") was a  comfort; that knowledge itself 
was a constant companion.
How  does one become good at being alone? This question might be 
uniquely  poignant for those of us fresh out of a breakup, or 
still in our 20's, but  it's a question people confront at all 
stages of life and for all sorts of  reasons, whether it's a big 
move to a new city, an unexpected death, a  divorce or any 
countless number of things that life can throw your  way.  And 
regardless of your romantic status or friend count, it's  nice to 
be capable of enjoying a movie or dinner alone.  A friend  told me 
a story about an acquaintance who is married with kids: She has a  
meltdown whenever her family goes out of town; she doesn't know 
what  to do with herself.
So, I decided to seek out the world's wisdom on  how to be 
alone.  (As I tweeted earlier this week, "One of my  favorite 
things about being a journo? Being able to take my own burning  
questions to experts under the pretense of public service.") In 
terms  of romantic aloneness, Anna David seemed like a good first 
stop: She wrote  the memoir "Falling for Me: How I Hung Curtains, 
Learned to Cook, Traveled  to Seville, and Fell in Love," and 
understands the ache of singlehood all  too well.  "I spent so 
much time where everything was filtered  through this lens of `but 
I'm alone.` And I was haunted by the thought,  `I'm going to be 
alone forever,`" she says.
It took a long time  to move past that fear.
In fact, it took setting out to write a book about  bettering 
herself in order to land a man.  "The idea I pitched Harper  
Collins was very much `Let me get totally perfect so that I can 
find  the perfect guy to fall in love with me and the last chapter 
will be about  how in love we areea`"b she says, but none of that 
happened.  While  the book ultimately delivers a happier message 
of self-love, she privately  felt like a failure for still being 
single.  Shortly thereafter,  though, she "bottomed out" in a 
relationship where she says, "I just got  crazy and obsessive and 
I started to believe ...  it's this guy or a  lifetime of eating 
dinner with my cat." Either through the writing of the  book or 
that final relationship disaster, she says, "I basically realized  
that it was the old cliche: that no guy was ever going to make me  
happy," she says.  "I was buying into this age-old fairy tale  
that at the end of the movie you end up with a guy."
In my  search for wisdom on spending time alone, regardless of 
relationship  status, I quickly found that very few experts want 
to talk about being  alone; they'd rather talk about how to not be 
alone.  Judy Ford, the  author of "Single: The Art of Being 
Satisfied, Fulfilled and Independent,"  is a rare exception to 
that: "We are born alone and die alone, and deep  within our souls 
we live alone," she tells me in an email, instantly  invoking 
those universal truths that hurt the most.  "No one else  ever 
abides in our skin.  If we haven't yet come to terms with this  
ultimate truth, we are scared out of our minds to be alone." She 
adds,  "The fear of public speaking is a mere tickle in comparison 
to the seismic  ripples of horror that reverberate through the 
heart when faced with  spending the weekend alone," says Ford.  
"People are more courageous  about going to the dentist than they 
are about eating in a restaurant  alone." That's true for young as 
well as old: Many seniors feel lonely  "because they have not 
developed their inner life," she says.
Her practical tips for conquering solitude are to get creative  
("creativity is the cure of loneliness"), push yourself to "do  
something you have never done before" (like taking yourself out 
to  dinner), admit your loneliness to others ("you might be 
surprised that  they feel lonely too"), "get cozy with the gaps," 
those empty spaces in  between plans, and remind yourself, 
"Loneliness is not going to kill me."  These aren't easy fixes -- 
and may induce eye-rolls from self-help haters  -- but they're 
crucial to happiness, she argues: "To experience wholeness,  first 
we experience the void."
Speaking of happiness, Gretchen  Rubin wrote the book on it -- 
she's the author of the New York Times  bestseller "The Happiness 
Project" -- and has a slightly different  take.  "Ancient 
philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that  probably the 
key to happiness is strong relationships with other people,"  she 
says.  "You need to feel like you have intimate long-lasting  
relationships, you need to feel like you belong, you need to feel 
like  you can get support and give support." Her emphasis isn't on 
learning to  be happy alone, but rather recognizing what level of 
social interaction  makes you happiest -- and it's different for 
everyone: "Maybe you don't  have a sweetheart, but being around a 
lot of other people might make you  feel happier even if you wish 
you had that," she tells me.
"I  think people sometimes aren't very aware of how much they 
need to be  around other people." As for making the most of 
whatever degree of  aloneness that you have -- whether it's being 
a bachelor or living in a  new town with no friends -- she says, 
"You don't wait for circumstances to  change in order to have the 
life that you want.
If you want to  go to France, don't think, `Oh, as soon as I 
have a boyfriend I'll go to  France` or `As soon as I get married 
I'll fix up my apartment.` Have the  life that you want as much as 
you can now." That's instead of putting your  life on hold, or 
living in ignorance of what you do have: `It's things  like 
electricity, the minute your electricity goes out you're like,  
`Oh my gosh, if only I had electricity I'd be so happy!" But it's 
not  like we walk around in an ecstasy every day over 
electricity."
As for simple, radical acts of public solitude -- like taking 
yourself out  to dinner -- Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist and 
author of "Going Solo: The  Extraordinary Rise and Surprising 
Appeal of Living Alone," says a large  part of people's discomfort 
is the result of social expectation.   "There are some 
[activities] that are socially approved to do alone, like  you 
wouldn't think twice about going to a coffee shop by yourself, 
but  going to a fancy restaurant or a play feels strange." That 
strangeness is  typically the result of our knee-jerk assumption 
that doing things alone  equals desperation.
Two years ago, the video "How to Be Alone"  starring writer 
Tanya Davis and her poem about the "freedom" of being by  yourself 
-- eating, dancing, reading, hiking -- went viral.  The  video got 
more than 4.5 million hits: Clearly, her sweet and simple advice  
(for example, "We could start with the acceptable places, the  
bathroom, the coffee shop, the library") resonated with people.   
As she says in the four-minute clip, "Society is afraid of 
alonedom,  like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like 
people must have  problems if, after a while, nobody is dating 
them.  But lonely is a  freedom that breathes easy and weightless 
and lonely is healing if you  make it."
It's odd that being alone requires any instruction.   As Ford so 
exquisitely and painfully put it: We're born alone, we die  alone 
and "deep within our souls we live alone" -- but it's one of  
life's many poetic ironies that we couldn't be more together in 
our  aloneness.
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