[acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone

[Mary Ann Robinson]

Thanks for sharing so many great articles.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "peter altschul" <paltschul at centurytel.net>
To: "Acbhsp" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 10:09 AM
Subject: [acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone


> 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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