Sometimes You Have to be Alone
(excerpt from "Sticky Rice is a Dessert")
July 1998
Part I
Last night I came across some unsettling stuff...
How eloquent a word... STUFF. I use the word stuff only because it's interchangable. the actual "thing isn't relevant. Just the nature, and the nature of it is all the same. It just makes you feel bad... away from the vagueness...
So last night , when I came across this stuff, I felt so alone, I grabbed the telephone receiver, as children of the 21st century are prone to do, and dialed frantically in search of a companion to share my angst. Five phoecalls later, I still felt alone.
But it's not a bad thing though. Once again, the beastly optimist inside me emerges. That night I planed today as an outing to embrace myself. Yes, corny as it may sound.
So here I am, sitting in a cafe, eloquently titled "The Room" to be with "Me."
What is going on in my mind?
At work, there were people around me, yet I felt alone. So that scratches the idea of being alone as a physical state. I spent my entire workday chatting online. (Another passtime of the 21st century youth.) I chatted with over 30 different people across the world. I still felt alone. I'm now sitting here, by myself, pursuing a conversation with no one. And finally, I don't feel alone. I am one with my thoughts and these words on paper provide me with a comfort no other can.
Sometimes you need to be alone.
Only then can you realize the most important company you can keep is with yourself. There will always be people who can relate and sympathize as well as people in this world who can't. What's most important is if you can assess your situation and apply it to the grander scope of things. Can you sympathize with yourself and how you relate to the world? Once that is understood, then the most important listener and sympathizer is yourself. In understanding that, and more importantly, knowing that, one can never be alone.
I have grown to understand so much of myself in this past year alone. Only in situatiuons where I was forced to live by someone else's guidelines for life, I have understood what it means to be me... to live for myself, to think for myself, and most importantly, to be myself. And I will never be alone.
Never expect anything form anyone. Expectations as such are an arrogant belief that you have assessed everything in that person's life. From the beginning of their "relevant" experiences to the tangible circumstances outside.
One can understand rain and snow, and follow the weather patterns once it has come, but as every weatherman has duly noted, it is just a prediction and a forecast... far from a concrete fact. As humans, we are born form the same nature as the winds, sky, and waters, and as such, are as unpredicatable.
"I am certain that nothing is certain"
Maybe one day I will be able to write purely for myself, without having to depend on a vicarious pride from having others read my work. But then again, is there smething wrong with wanting to share my life? In arrogantly believeing that these words written bears more importance than the paper it is written on?
I view my writing as a constant, the common denominator of human nature, with the variable tossed in as me.
The base of what I have to say is constant. Of course, that's what I am going to say. Once again, everything that has occurred in my life has either been discredited as a fluke isolated situation or been more testimony to my belief. Actually, the flukes have all been craftily interpreted to re-inforce my constant belief. And in understanding that, I know that I am my best company, and my own true companion.
The countless people I have chatted with can't truly relate. The dear friends I have made can never truly understand. They can have an understanding of the basic concept, the constant, but the variables are what is sacred to each person as an individual. Strangely enough, that's what has made everyone the same and different.
Enough about my assessments of humanity and human nature, we must now delve into the variable of me. Generalizations aren't nearly as juicy as the specifics of this wildcard I call myself.
