It is the hardest to stand among the crowd and shout out how lonely you are feeling, either inside of you or simply by the way you are treated in a society. I will try and make it short for this first part. My aim is to sympa-write (if you are feeling the same as you read this along, and sympathise as if you were writing this) on loneliness and about loneliness, a cancerous phenomenon caused by our existence in a minuscule fraction of time. Not that we blame time, but that we question our existence in time.

You hear the words “lonely” from those who are, and who can be, by definition, lonely; which comes to no surprise. But you hear the same word from a happy, extremely social, and by stereotypical definition “successful”, which is a huge surprise. It is as real as I heard it from a friend last week:

“What is the meaning of life?” oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suicidal or anything; it’s just that I often ask myself what’s the solution to all the things I can’t change…”

She was right; we know a few things about the life we are living, like “we often can’t change what bothers us”, “we are often bemused with the phenomena we experience when we are alone”, and many more. But there is a side that we do not know, or if I am honest with you, we will never know, like, “what if I have made the wrong decision in choosing to live with a partner, choosing a career, or choosing a certain group of friends”. Or worse, what if all I am doing is to escape the reality that deep down, I am lonely, and all this is for me, a form of entertainment. And the thought comes in, slowly but steadily. Now, unlike what you would have imagined, or expected to read here, I will not be writing about the definition of loneliness in this first part. I will write what I would have written in the last part; that we must enjoy the feeling of being lonely, because like many other things we have, and we are not grateful for, loneliness comes to us as a precious gift, with hard work, and days of grief, lethargy and many more of these feelings that I will write on in the next parts under loneliness.

As I promised, I am making this simple and short. Perhaps this fairly short quote by Charles Bukowski is aligned with our  sympa-writing here:

“I’ve never been lonely. I’ve been in a room — I’ve felt suicidal. I’ve been depressed. I’ve felt awful — awful beyond all — but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me…or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I’ve never been bothered with because I’ve always had this terrible itch for solitude. It’s being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I’ll quote Ibsen, “The strongest men are the most alone.” I’ve never thought, “Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I’ll feel good.” No, that won’t help. You know the typical crowd, “Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?” Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing out there. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn’t want to hide in factories. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Let’s drink more wine!” (From GoodReads)     

Whether you are sitting at your desk reading these, or you are just about to keyboard-punch me or Bukowski for speaking what we feel, or you are contemplating on these words, I hope you found all this somehow relevant. Put your thoughts and comments here, but please don’t stupidify yourself in any way.

Until next time and the next part on loneliness…