[acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone

Tue Aug 14 09:11:36 EDT 2012

For sure I agree with that, Louise.  I'm definitely in no hurry to deal with 
whomever for the sake of being with someone.  <LOL>
And, as for eating alone versus not? I'm not a huge fan of restaurant dining 
anyway so this really does not concern me.  I certainly do not miss out on 
any opportunity, however I like to believe that there are many more 
opportunities for my life that go way beyond eating at this or that 
restaurant.  <LOL>

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louise Pearson" <frogdog at iinet.net.au>
To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 7:42 AM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone

Hi everyone

Interesting topic.  I'm fine about dining alone ... in food courts, in
restaurants ... I don't do it as easily at dinner time, but I certainly will
do it at lunch time or if I want to take myself out for a coffee.

The conversations around me don't worry me.  If I feel the urge, I listen.
If I don't, I tune them out.  More often than not I am out with friends, and
it might be others listening to my conversations so it doesn't worry me a
bit.

Now don't get me wrong, I'd rather have a partner.  I guess though, I'll
wait single for Mr. Right, rather than put up with Mr. Right Now, just so
that I can say i'm not alone. *grin*
Louise.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "J.Rayl" <thedogmom63 at frontier.com>
To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 9:16 PM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone

>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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