Loneliness is Not Necessarily Being Alone
Depression is currently a most commonly accepted condition that has become the reason for many to avoid the inevitable. Shirking from work, avoiding a lover or a mate, or just wanting to be alone is understandable when ‘depression’ is factored in.
Home Alone
Can you lock your door, switch off your mobile and plug out the landline, switch off the TV and stereo and iPod and MP3, switch off your PC and Blackberry, close the book you’ve been reading, draw the curtains and just sit back to listen to yourself? Can you feel that moment of ‘switching out the world’ and just being with your self? Can you smile at the spectre of just you alone with not an intruding stimulus to your peace?
Are you, then, comfortable with yourself, not fussing about for a filler of time in form of biscuits or a beer, pretending to cook, ironing or compulsive cleaning, looking for mundane activities just to fill space and time? Can you remain so for a minute without cracking, yearning to call mummy for a good cry to drown your sorrows, or a friend for a gossipy titbits or be a BBC mouthpiece? Can you survive without the desire to crash at a mate’s place for bonding?
Can you get along just fine without company and neither looking out of the window longingly for the girl next door? Or could you still face the prospects of yet another similar day without thinking of buying a pet cat or dog?
Loner Never
In an increasingly global world with open migrations and enhanced communication means, many are those often on the move or settling in a foreign home. In the resultant milieu of cultural diversity, coupled with career demands in a fast world that also is as complex in terms of personal security and variability in peoples’ rights to exercise their freedom of choices in whatever means, trust has been eroded. Runaway youths have stretched the numbers in isolation, just like their parents or those who children mature and leave home. The inner cities have turned very isolative even with the overpopulations that should otherwise provide support and companionship.
Many others have taken up lifestyles that allow them retreats to far-off hideaways, or have adopted concepts that call for secretive habitations. Extreme enthusiasts of environment conservations have defined hermit afresh. They can often be in harmony with by some religious believers and track events sports stars. Similarly, the world of espionage has sent a few of its own in such adventures.
Changing family structures have led a greater shift to single unit homes following many couples opting out of having children, or when such couples separate. And in a worse case, bereavement makes more of single unit families. Yet, many more are those who have declared celibacy on relationships and focused their minds on careers and personal fulfilment.
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