[acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone

[J.Rayl]

I agree, Andy.  I hate going out, to a restaurant or anywhere else, and 
eating alone.  I generally do not--unless I have too because I"m traveling, 
etc.  But here, I always just go with my friends or someone.  Its not that I 
can't do it, I certainly can; I don't like it and choose not too.
But food courts are really no different. Again, I hear all these 
conversations around me and it only increases that "you're alone" feeling. 
So again, I try to avoid it as much as possible.
Some people, though, sighted or blind, have no problems with that at all. 
<smiles>

Jessie Rayl
thedogmom63 at frontier.com
www.facebook.com/Eaglewings10
www.pathtogrowth.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Baracco, Andrew W" <Andrew.Baracco at va.gov>
To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone


I hate going to a restaurant alone.  I hear all these conversations
going on, and wish there was someone to converse with.  To me, going to
a restaurant means a lot more than consuming a good meal.  There is also
the experience of sharing that meal with someone that you have some kind
of connection with.  Recently, I was alone for a few days because my
wife went east to attend her mom's funeral.  I either cooked something
or had something delivered, but could not bring myself to go to a
restaurant alone.

Andy


-----Original Message-----
From: acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf
Of peter altschul
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 7:09 AM
To: Acbhsp
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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