On solitude

I sat around a dinner table with 4 girls, it was our weekly ladies night in which we talked mostly about our love life and held each others emotional hands over red wine and chocolate cake. 

Three of them took turns talking about thier collective luck in each finding new love in some form or another. They swooned and aplauded each other. I chimed in to congratulate them but tried hard to keep my own grief and solitude out of the conversation until a new girl who didn't know the tragic details of my love life...asked. It then came flooding out like a sad muddy river. My river was more tragic than the ganges river in India, with more dead bodies floating in it then should be allowed for bathing and washing of white saris. 

This girl listened and then said along with the rest nearly in unison, "it is good for you to learn to be alone. It will make you strong. Being alone is good. You don't need someone." In that moment I wanted to hurl my cake across the table at her until it soiled her pretty white cardigan with chocolate splatters. She was not alone and based on her horrid choices in past boyfriends nor would she choose to be. So why was she dolling out this horrid advice like the chalky pastel mints next to the cash register at all American diners. They are not good, nor should they be taken even if they are free. None of these girls keeping me momentary company were alone, all of them would leave our dinner and crawl into bed with someone who would hold them close. All off them would disapear silently off into the night and keep someone company untill another week went by for us to meet again. So then, why were they all extolly the virtues of aloneness?

The death rate for lonely people is statistically higher. Lonliness is a silent killer which goes untalked about. A secret kept hiding under the stairs with dust mites and sad lonely spiders. People who are alone are more likely to die of cancer and heart disease and more likely to suffer from depression. 

Solitary confinement is a punishment in prison and during war because it is physically painful. More painful than a knife to the skin. Taking humans away from each other actually hurts, physically hurts. Yet, we live in a society that rewards solitude. 

In bali, where I call home no one would ever consider solitude a goal worth striving for. The balinese do nearly everything in groups. I once walked into a room to discover all four of my staff cleaning one window. This is not because this window demanded this kind of effort but because they wanted to be together. Close together, right next to each other in fact. I frequently find them all curled up on my porch sleeping happily together under one blanket. For them, togetherness is easy. The western world fights it and keeps it at bay, believing that solitariness is the kind of noble pursuit of the likes of Hemingway, lost at sea writing great works. I reject all of this, I believe we should have people. But which people I wonder as I sit alone at home with my phone and my computer. Which people?