[acb-hsp] Being Alone

Tue Aug 14 08:52:10 EDT 2012

Well, that's part of it, Yvonne.  As you know from having been sighted, most people don't just sit there staring into space while listening to a headset.  They eat, and read, or work on their work via computer, etc.
It is indeed more complicated for people who are blind.

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

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Yvonne 
  To: 'Discussion list for ACB human service professionals' 
  Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 5:44 PM
  Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] Being Alone

  I find that I do not know what to do when I am at a restaurant alone. Sighted people can read the paper or a book, but while I can listen to my victor reader, what do I do with my hands and where do I look?

  Yvonne

  From: acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of Baracco, Andrew W
  Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 2:49 PM
  To: Discussion list for ACB human service professionals
  Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] Being Alone

  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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