[acb-hsp] Being Alone

[Baracco, Andrew W]

I have lived alone, and I have lived with either a wife or significant
other.  I'll take living with another any time over living alone.

 

Andy

 

 

From: acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf
Of Mmorrowfarrell at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 7:36 AM
To: acb-hsp at acb.org
Subject: [acb-hsp] Being Alone

 

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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