Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts

The Fragile Eggs of Companionship





I've had the sinking feeling, at times, that I've put too many precious eggs in too few welcoming baskets. And at times I’ve been afraid that some of them, some of the most carefully and deeply invested eggs, have been casually dismissed…neglected…tossed around…even stomped on, crushed and obliterated, whether intentionally or not. And when this happens, what else is there to do but pick up the pieces, these shattered remnants of what had been a blossoming interpersonal relationship, and try another approach? I’m not one to just turn my back and walk away, because there must have been a good reason why I had been compelled to invest so deeply. Some combination of factors had made it worth it, had made it seem reciprocated in kind, and I want to put all effort into at the very least reevaluating and redistributing these factors so that something, if not all of it, can still remain between us. Sometimes this was just a casual friendship, sometimes a much more enduring one, once it was even an intimate one. As it turns out, obviously enough, the magnitude of the resulting damage is in this same order.

Interestingly, it's not those who blatantly stomp on the eggs who inflict the most pain. In this way it's quick and made very clear, at least, despite the violence, despite the pain. No, rather, it's the more casual, slow-going dismissals that are particularly difficult to make sense of and deal with—when you don't realize the damage that has been accumulating, that mess slowly growing in the bottom of that particular basket, oozing and spreading over any other still-healthy eggs. It slowly infects the entire scope of the relationship, so gradually that it goes almost entirely unnoticed until one day you open your eyes and all of the damage, all of the shattered broken mess, is laid bare.

My first instinct upon realization is to gather them up, all of these eggs I've distributed, all of the ones still healthy and functioning at least and, after cleaning up the messes of those that didn’t endure, encase them in something hopefully impenetrable like diamond, or adamantium. Protect them, these fragile investments of mine, so as not to let any possibility remain of such abuse and hardship. Then, once properly armored, maybe give a few of them back (just a few!) to each connection of mine, enough to at least enjoy a nice friendship, and keep the rest of them locked safely away inside an unbreakable vault to deny any access.

But what good would that do? Sure they'd be safe inside the confines of their hardened shells, but life would then be almost unbearably dull and lonely. Because what at first seems better and more comforting, to carefully reinvest the new batch and take in the comfort of knowing they will be safe in their armored shells, is actually its own separate kind of trap; the comfort would be short-lived. The relationships they symbolize would now be unchanging by definition, perhaps even more destined to fade because of this. Because again, a gradually fading, casually dismissed investment is much more damaging in the end, being unchanging in this decline, than one that can be addressed and modified accordingly.

The deeply-rooted trouble here is that addressing the complications of any relationship requires the willful cooperation of all parties involved. So your friend, or your partner, must also desire to make amends together with you. I believe this is the supreme difficulty we all face in our relations, why it sometimes seems so difficult to connect with those we hold so dear. They must also realize that there is something which needs addressing, that there is perhaps not enough cushioning for those ever-fragile eggs you are incubating together. This is the case with even the most casual of friendships, and I assert that this is the primary cause of most, if not all, damaged relations of all kinds.

I think, then, of all the potential, all the as yet unrealized beauty that these priceless, fragile little eggs can bring me and others, the fullness that will otherwise be hopelessly lacking among all relations. Whether this is a “standard” friendship, even if maybe one of those incredibly fun ones that are destined to dwindle somewhat in time (but on good terms), maybe even one of those exceptionally real, dependable, everlasting ones that you can rely on until the bitter end of time, or maybe, just maybe, a romance, the truest most beautiful fairy tale come to reality, it doesn’t alter this fundamental idea of cooperation and mutual effort and consideration.

And sometimes a little nudge is all another person needs to realize a shortcoming on their part; for this reason it is always important to keep up your own efforts. I’ve noticed a lot of people tend to sit themselves on the sidelines and insist that the other person is the one who needs to come out and say or do something, but the danger here is that if everyone involved is under the same impression, nothing is going to happen. Somebody has to begin the effort! But I, or anyone, cannot bring out this potential alone. It is, as uncomfortable as the realization makes me, entirely dependent on others. This has to be done carefully; it can't be forced, or pressured, or otherwise coerced without jeopardizing the very thing being attempted to develop.

No, the eggs need to be able to grow, to hatch and blossom, on their own time. If we want any chance of a meaningful relationship (any kind, friendly or romantic), the eggs need to exist in all their full fragile glory. For when you are entrusted with these eggs you are their incubator, their basket. You need to understand the responsibilities you have been trusted with. Understand that they need love, patience, and understanding—all that you can muster, to the absolute best of your ability. They will thrive and reward you beyond the wildest dreams imaginable. Nothing else in the world can provide this like a truly understanding, mutual relation can.

I can't help but wonder what things would be like if people, with all their feelings and emotions, could be reliably fit somehow into a calculation. A set of calculations can triangulate the position of a tiny rock, or spacecraft, hurtling through space to incredible accuracy. This can be very, very useful, for obvious reasons. That the factors involved are even able to be recognized and predicted make all the difference. The same goes for many, many things in our lives. But such a strategy is all but useless with a person's feelings. Sure, there must be people who have developed an uncanny skill in reading people, and maybe can make startlingly accurate predictions about others and how to go about building whatever depth of relation is most achievable between them. But I don't think there is the slightest chance of such a practice being even remotely reliable on a large meaningful scale, or across a meaningful timeline, by most people. The depth of each person's mind is an unimaginably complex place, and I find it somewhat… frightening, to be honest, but ruthlessly fascinating. Maybe it's a wonder anyone gets along at all, let alone bond like so many lifelong friendships have or especially truly fall in love. These precious eggs we are always entrusting into each other represent so much of what is so advantageous to us as human beings, able to form these sorts of bonds among each other and face the wild complexities of the world together.

And so absolutely any connection is meaningful and important beyond any combinations of words, and is worthy of every bit of care and consideration possible. It's just not worth missing out on because of what may very well be petty differences exaggerated by stubbornness from one or both sides. That person you met one time, who said something weird and you never talked to them again, could have been the most beloved friend or companion you could possibly have hoped to have. That person who you used to be good friends with, and who never seems to call or want to hang out anymore and you don't feel like you should have to "put all the effort in," could also be the most beloved friend or companion you could possibly have. One extra little egg entrusted to them could have made all the difference. You don’t know unless you’ve put forth all of your effort deemed worthy for their cause, and carefully but graciously invested upon them a portion of your own collection of priceless eggs for incubation.

Whatever the case, the nourishment of these eggs needs cooperation and uncompromising honesty. For the love of all things, please let’s communicate with each other. Effectively! It's stunning how often this gets in the way, this simple lack of communication, needlessly complicating things or destroying them altogether. When there are differences between two people, embrace them! Differences can help us learn together, see things from entirely separate vantage points, like nothing else can. And when there are similarities between people, embrace them as well! Similarities can help us reinforce our own drives and interests because we find comfort when other people have developed them similarly yet independently.

If you feel even the slightest shred of feeling for a person, even the tiniest bit of compassion for another, don't completely give up on them when things might have grown awkward or distant. And if someone, no matter how dear to you they are, wishes for you to lose touch with others (or if you realize that this is happening of its own accord), please consider this long and hard. There is probably more at stake than you realize. I submit that it is absolutely not worth it in the end if a newly found loved one imposes upon you to spend less time, or no time at all, with your previously held group of friends. I do not believe that one single romantic relationship can outshine a handful of long-held friendly ones… yet I see this time and time again and is, ultimately, one of the primary driving factors built into this writing.

Because it hurts, because there is no reason why a person can’t retain all prior friendships, even if somewhat less devotedly, after entering into a romantic one. That romance should be built into the already existing web of connections without drastically altering its structure. Otherwise one is going to come across as if those friendships were only mere placeholders for the one actual relation that was being sought after all along. And I don’t believe that anyone actually goes about their lives that way, but many seem to tend to react in such a way as if this is somehow what is “meant” to happen. I worry sometimes that societal factors have built into many peoples’ minds that that one true love romance-turned-marriage is the prime objective and all else is secondary if not spread out to the sidelines altogether. But no, with every bit of stress that I can place on a single sentence, this is not how our ongoing relationships need to play out. All of these precious eggs that have been devoted in such an interweaving mesh of interconnections have had so much care, consideration, and time built into their foundations that unimaginable havoc is bound to be wreaked upon them under such circumstances, havoc probably not even realized inside the blissful mind of the romanced party.

This isn’t always the case, of course, and I applaud all of those who manage to maintain the best combinations of relations possible. In my own experience, however, this is not often the case, and it troubles me more deeply than most things witnessed so far in my time. And I always try to tell myself that it’s merely a phase, an understandable phase where hormones and emotions run rampant, but in truth this doesn’t comfort me much because I know that by the time those emotions have settled, and someone begins to desire those friendly relations once again, they may be long gone after having moved on themselves, having exhausted their own efforts to keep that basket warm and nourishing.

I, for one, am going to always focus on distributing my own eggs as far and wide as I can manage, carefully considering those seeming to be most worthy and considerate of them, in order to enjoy as much shared fulfillment in life as I can possibly maintain. And I hope that others will do the same in return, not only for me in particular, but for everyone else striving so earnestly to connect with so many other people inhabiting this wildly complicated planet together. Each of us are all we all have to truly connect and relate with, and this should never be cast to the sidelines. Don't reinforce the eggs. They need room to grow. Reinforce the baskets, and reinforce your individual efforts to form, retain, and nurture these connections. The time we all have here together needs to be cherished with every fiber of every person's being. Every little tick of the clock occurs and is gone forever. I don't like to think of time as the means by which wounds are healed, but as the means by which they are learned to be dealt with and learned from, and maybe even simply forgotten if such is the case. Perhaps this is what some call "healing”. As long as we try hard enough, the best is yet to come.

Posted by Unknown | at 11:07 PM | 0 comments

Engineering Nostalgia



Have you ever noticed that a certain song, or a certain smell, or a certain taste invariably brings back vivid memories of a certain period of time from your past? I’ve been aware of this sensation for a long time now, as long as I can even remember. There are still songs and smells and tastes that momentarily invoke such intense memories of childhood or, most profoundly of all, my years spent in the height of my junior high school years where I was most happy with a specific group of friends and adventures. I cherish these tenuous ties with the past, and I’ve come to realize, sadly, that they will only fade with time. My hope is that the most meaningful among them will always persist. Perhaps the most deeply engraved of them will always provide this nostalgic effect, however brief it may be each time, because they’ve managed to dig themselves a burrow some level below the threshold of passing memories. I am convinced that those sensory ties which somehow become attached to individual memories are one of the most powerful links to be utilized in making sure that the most cherished memories of all can be held onto, can be nestled into rightful burrows of their own so as not to ever be lost altogether.

I think one of the problems is that the memories themselves will continue to age as one grows older, persistently crowded out by newer, fresher memories in each moment, and the relevance that the sense which is tied to them has will continue to be spread over more and more more-current experiences. Realizing this, I’ve made efforts to isolate those particular senses which I’ve recognized are linked in this way. A particular Glade air freshener (Hawaiian Breeze, I believe) still never fails to bring me back into my dear friend Dave’s old room in Cheyenne and so I will never  use it myself. I’m afraid that the aroma will begin to attach itself to the present day, and gradually remove itself from those precious memories. But picking it up off the shelf and inhaling its sweet fragrance will always put me back into those cherished times, into that beloved room and into those dear memories and into the fun-filled company of a friend so favored. Left to such few and far between indulgences, the link should remain strong, and I can always rely on it to transport me at my whim.

Another powerful example is any of many songs that I used to listen to consistently for a certain period. But every time I listen to one of these songs now, its relevance shifts at least very slightly into this moment, becoming bit by bit more attached to a more current time frame. Even so, many songs still provide this most enjoyable sensation, even as I continue to enjoy them. Some songs I’ve already realized have lost most of their relevance into the past, yet even so every now and then one of these songs still manages to transport me so vividly into a memory. There must be some subtle factors which continue to play a role, perhaps a certain emotional state or an extra sense such as smell, which still even today invoke the nostalgia at its deepest. And some songs, the ones at the very height of this power, have hardly even faded at all even though I still put them on all the time. They’ve managed to stand the test of time even still, even when I’ve enjoyed them countless times throughout the years, even though I’ve experienced so many new memories in their presence. They still take me back, still hold that original link. I am so grateful for this. These examples are definitely the most deeply held, the ones persistently refusing to be outdone in the present.

Taste is a tougher case; I think this might be (for me, at least) because there are not very many examples of unique-enough tastes that are specific to a narrow time period. There are a few, though. The first that comes to mind is a certain flavor of Doritos (at the time it was a “mystery” flavor, I think it ended up being cheeseburger or something similar) which when I have happened to find them again strikingly reminds me of a certain time period several few years back when I was playing a new game and eating lots of them. Another example is candy corn, which never fails to put me back into the mind of myself as a child enjoying the treasures of a long Halloween trek.

I wonder often whether some of these particularly powerful nostalgic links will continue to persist even as I join the ranks of the elderly. So far some of them seem so much more deeply ingrained into my mind, and I sincerely hope that I can hold on to these fantastically enjoyable experiences. I’ve thought long and hard about where this phenomenon originates, how it’s formed and how it can be retained as best as possible, and I think I’ve gotten a pretty good idea about how to keep them close, and even help to create new ones, most efficiently.

I’ve developed a strategy for willfully creating this phenomenon. I call it “engineering nostalgia.” For me this whole concept has been most powerful in relation to a certain clearly-defined and memorable timeframe of the past (not so easy to anticipate at the time) and, more specifically and controllably, in relation to more trivial things like playing a certain video game or listening to a certain album. If the video game or album is new to your experience, it is for good reason much easier to coordinate complementary senses to go along with them. What I’ve learned to do is this: when you begin playing a new game (or reading a new book, or visiting a new place), also buy a new CD (or at least begin playing one that you haven’t listened much of). The closer they coincide as brand-new experiences, the better the effect. If you can get hold of both a new game and a new CD at the same time, and begin experiencing them simultaneously, this is the ideal situation. For extra effect also buy a new air freshener and a new flavor of some snack, such as Doritos, you’ve never had before and combine them all.

So put in the new CD (and the new air freshener, and open up the bag of chips) as you begin playing this new game. Further down the road, even years and years later, any one of your senses, randomly reminded of any one of these sensations, will bring you back to this time period when you were playing this game and listening to this album and breathing in this aroma and tasting this snack and you can bask in the resulting nostalgia. It is a wonderful thing, made even more wonderful when you can willfully induce it.

Of course, playing a new video game is just one example of a time when you can anticipate a nostalgic bond able to be formed. There are many, many others, if you are careful enough to provide for them, such as a vacation to a new place or moving into a new house or buying a new car or beginning a new hobby. The possibilities are practically endless, because it really comes down to anything that’s new enough in our experience to be so impressionable. And the base act doesn’t even need to be new to you, it just seems easier to me. But maybe the secondary influence is what’s new. You might have been going for nightly walks for months already, but if you have a new album in your mp3 player then further down the road of life those songs are very likely going to bring you back to those walks, to the times when you were just getting to know those songs, and you will miss those times. You will long to be on that very same walk again, wishing you could experience it for the first time all over again.

Nostalgia is a funny thing, I’ve come to find. This feeling of such deep familiarity and longing seems to be not necessarily due to the belief that a certain timeframe was so “good,” but simply because it is gone. It is familiar, we know exactly what came of it, whether good or bad, and there is comfort in this. Even the not-so-good memories sometimes invoke this feeling. There are some periods of time that my rational mind would never even consider revisiting because of how rough I know and remember them to have been—but when some sense is spontaneously stimulated in just the right way to invoke the memory, I cannot deny the nostalgia. Part of me longs to be back in this time despite my avoidance, despite the knowledge deep within myself that I did not enjoy it. But it would be comforting even so, I realize, even if only because I know that things turned out alright, I survived to the present with a healthy grasp of new learning experiences, because this particular memory had its particular impact on the present. On the other hand, both the present and future are perpetually shrouded in mystery and we are always anxious for it to some degree, which I think works to reinforce the longing for the past. We don’t have the comfort of knowing how the future turns out like we do with previous events. But there is beauty in this mystery, as well—the future holds immeasurable possibilities that we humans alone have the ability attempt to foresee rationally and, most importantly, to shape so according to our desires.

Time may flow invariably and without the slightest bit of consideration for us measly human beings, but we can and must fill it with as much as each individual among us possibly can, and achieve the grandest impact as is our power to achieve. By whatever means necessary this must be done to truly make our mark. Impacts can come in so many forms, from a simple smile that influenced someone else in some positive way, to a deep conversation with a friend which helps them see something more clearly, to a bestselling book that millions upon millions of people read and are affected by, to an everlasting friendship that works to profoundly shape the futures that two people share together and independently because of the impacts they have on each other, to so many countless other possibilities. It’s impossible to know what random trivial or heartfelt acts might be the positive influence somebody needed at that moment. The beauty that is life is in our power to influence, at least to some degree—and every single last moment is precious beyond the most poetic words anyone could possibly put to them. Any means that you have in your power to engineer the nostalgia which is so powerful in appreciating the life you have lived is incredibly useful, and I believe should be passionately fought for. This may be as simple as putting forth the effort to realize that recent events are special and unique enough to warrant the extra care in uniting them with a carefully considered added element so that you can utilize this connection farther down the road. You can bring the joyful moments of your past back to you so much more readily if you have attached something special to them at the time.

So many people say that life is short. And I realize that this is generally meant to be inspirational, but how can life be considered short when there is absolutely nothing anyone can experience that is longer and more fundamental? Life encompasses utterly everything that holds physical meaning, everything that means anything! Every thought, every feeling, every joy, every sorrow, every last experience is a product of life in all of its glory in whatever duration each of us happens to “receive.” I feel like this insistence that pursuits should be sought after, and joys should be appreciated, because “life is short” are degrading the truest beauties that could be relished. If life is short then we might be more likely to hastily indulge reckless behavior, or fail to consider the most meaningful pursuits. Life is long. Life is absolutely everything that each of us will experience, and consider, and enjoy, and learn from. Life is absolutely not short.

It could be argued that one life was shorter than another. As a measure of time in its purest form, this is irrefutable. Tragedies happen to the best of us, without warning or meaning. But as a measure of quality, or of impact, it is definitely not so simple. One person’s life at 50 (or at 20) could have twice the lasting memories as another’s at any age, if such a value could somehow be quantified. But it can’t, really. In this sense it’s a matter of content, of perception and of impact. A life lived in fame is obviously favored to appear to have been more impactful, but is there any way to know? I don’t think any span of life will ever seem to be enough, no matter how long it endured, especially if people are compelled to think of it as “short.” This only stresses that the value of a life is not necessarily lessened much by a short timeframe. It is unfortunate, of course, that any life ends any sooner than it might have under ideal circumstances. But it is what it is, and I sincerely hope that the person in each such case had as fulfilling and impactful a life as possible in his/her allotted time. It’s going to seem short no matter what, if you have such an outlook, even for the longest among them.

And yet I can’t argue with the idea that someone who runs around proclaiming that life “is short” and, in turn, motivates themselves (and others) to live it more effectively, is certainly getting something valuable out of it. I just think the same value, and so much more, can be gotten out of life without this nonsense. We don’t need to convince ourselves that our time is “short.” We need to convince ourselves that our time is precious, and long, and we have all this priceless span of life to fill with as much positivity and goodness as we can manage. Do it because it is so long, because there is so much available to fill it with.

I wonder what is even meant by that generic phrase “Life is short?” Broken down to its individual words, the phrase lacks meaning. “Life” is obvious; it is the perception each of us has of our surroundings in the duration that we have them. It is life, it’s self-explanatory. We all know what life is. “Short,” however, is a comparative argument; there is no “short” without acknowledging something that is not. Certainly, in respect to the lifespan of a giant tortoise (reportedly an average of 177 years in captivity), or of a Redwood tree (reportedly 500 to 700 years) or of a star (our own rather “average” star will supposedly have “lived” for 10 billion years by its end), the average human lifespan is but a fraction—a decent fraction of the giant tortoise, but a mere nanosecond of the “cosmic day” compared to the star. But what real relevance does any of this have? We are not giant tortoises and we most certainly are not stars. Their lifetimes apply to them and reflect upon the grand scheme of things from their individual perspectives but need not imply any sort of shortcoming on our part. So what if a giant tortoise lives 177 years? Its life is trivial compared to ours. Nothing against humongous elderly turtles but, come on, their biology is so much simpler and so much more accommodating of their “long” lives. Can a giant tortoise entertain abstract thoughts and shape its environment to its will? Can it even move faster than five miles an hour? Would anyone seriously give up their human inheritance for these extra hundred years? Stars perpetually burn unimaginable amounts of fuel throughout their ridiculously long lifetimes, but they’re not even sentient. They can’t communicate with each other and share in mutual pursuits. They are stars. Any comparison is silly and fruitless. What real meaning does the comparison of years hold in any of these cases, or in any other?

Perhaps this judgment of shortness is being compared not to the lifetime of another thing, but to the lifetime each of us desires to experience. I think most people probably would like to know that they are going to live well beyond any averaged estimate of their society, or even the record breakers. But this shouldn’t make the life we are living, and whatever life is going to be in store for us, any less incredible or meaningful. It shouldn’t make us feel like it is short.

The average human lifespan is reportedly about 63 years (higher, of course, in first-world countries). As recently as 1796 the average lifespan was around 24 years (again, higher for first-world countries). Some are claiming that, as of today, as many as half of the children born will see their hundredth birthday in good health. And the children of these children may be looking at a reasonable likelihood of living to be 120 or 150! This thrills me to no end. I dearly wish that I had been born in this projected generation that is likely to live to be 120 in good health. The point is, we do have influence on the length of our lives. The evidence seems to suggest there is not some upper limit of barely more than 100 years, like some seem to believe. If life expectancy has been climbing, and continues to climb with appreciable progress, who can say it’s going to stop? Of course there are undeniable biological processes at work; bodies degrade and organs cease to function on their own, but clearly there are means to extend this downfall. We have every reason and every chance to put our unique human potential to work and extend this beautiful and mysterious thing that we call life for as long as we possibly can. Without it there is nothing, and I cannot consider that an acceptable alternative. What is nothing in the face of everything? If there are still more possible ways to advance the average lifespans of our kind, healthily and without significant consequence, then I absolutely believe that we should pursue this. I don’t believe there is some boundary inherently imposed on us by some all-encompassing force, over which we have no “right” to achieve. The boundary is ours to determine, ours to influence and improve upon by whatever means we gain understanding of it and competence to do so.

We tend to live our lives in defiance of the impending doom which is sure to eventually come. We indulge in material things, and in (sometimes foolish) “fun” pursuits, and we shrug off the idea that it’s all temporary. The people who act most recklessly (within reason) seem to be the most highly regarded by others. I mean, I’m all for having a good time, and making the most of my “prime” years, but I also feel like more meaningful pursuits are more advantageous at any age. This trait should not be shunned, but admired and strived for. The generic advice of the elderly is generic for a reason. We’re bound to realize this eventually, so why not as early as possible? We can still be somewhat reckless and have a good time while being considerate of whatever future we are imagining at each moment and efficiently factoring this.

This is all, of course, without consideration of a spiritual afterlife. I need to make that clear. Such a thing is just wildly difficult to mix into an argument (not to mention the number of people who will simply dismiss it). In fact, I respect this viewpoint, the idea of a spiritual eternity, most of all. But even so, even in the face of the promise of the most wonderful, glorious, eternal afterlife, if you believe in this, the physical, worldly life loses none of its significance. My argument does not change at all. Because an eternity of blissful spiritual afterlife is, by definition, going to be fulfilled regardless of the length of the timeframe spent roaming the Earth. What’s another ten, or fifty, or even a couple hundred years in the face of eternity? As a matter of worldly years, it doesn’t matter when you reach this eternity. You won’t even notice. But it makes all the difference here in the physical existence. You will have experiences, and you will impact others, and you will leave some sort of legacy. Another 50 years, if it were ours to be had, holds all the relevance in the world. You’ll never even know, once it’s said and done and you’ve achieved your spiritual afterlife, how long it took, how long you might have had to “suffer” (I disagree) through the physical realm. Any number of years is of no consequence in this regard, but any single year holds unimaginable promise here where the laws of physics bind us and our fellow humans need our help and our communication and companionship.

So give these things while you can. Indulge your passions. Make it count. Life is certainly not short, but it is all we have and the moments will flow by like a raging river if we aren’t careful to always make the best that our individual potential can make, and stay focused. Stay intrigued. Stay curious. And for the love of all that is good and just, be friendly and reasonable and share all that you can share with your fellow humans. What else can we do in this time that we have? Petty disagreements and judgments and ill-feelings in general are just silly. You should be ecstatic with joy any time your eyes fall upon those of another human, any fellow human being, especially when you know them personally and have any sort of memories and experiences together. To paraphrase the great Carl Sagan, you could travel a thousand light-years and never meet another. We should all be the best of friends, every last one of us. We should all be experiencing the joys and fascinations of life, and even the sorrows and pains, with one another. We should all be doing what we can to make sure the memories we have made, and perpetually continue to make, are as impactful and long-lasting as possible. We all have ultimate power over all of these things, including also our hopes and anticipations of the future. The best is yet to come.


Posted by Unknown | at 12:56 AM | 2 comments

Everybody Lives Alone

(March 28th, 2012)


A wise friend of mine once shared this quote by Hunter S. Thompson online, and I have spent a lot of time puzzling over it, off and on, over the years, and it ultimately ended up reinforcing and further shaping many of the thoughts that I’d been developing for a long time already:

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

And it also stirred up some new thoughts. Because what is anything worth, no matter how well you know yourself, if nobody else can truly understand the depths of your own mind? This troubles me, to some degree, but it also gives me hope, because I think that this idea is such a profound realization. You can never, ever truly know another person’s deepest mindset, but the most genuine among your acquaintances should have a character powerful enough so that their truest thoughts and feelings manifest themselves somehow into your relationship with them. Even if you can’t truly know, you can get a very powerful understanding, to the point where you can often accurately predict something they’ll say or do, and connect with them at a profound level. You’ll get something of a sense of how this person really thinks and feels, and you will feel that much closer to them for this, even if you cannot ever fully understand the depths.

Surely you’ve noticed this, that you can sometimes predict (with striking accuracy, even) how a friend or loved one will react to some bit of news, or a shared thought of your own, or even just a joke? It could be coincidence, of course, some of the times. Many people may react in very similar ways to the same stimulus. But if it happens often, especially to a wide assortment of stimuli, then you are probably on to something. You have probably come to understand this person to a level deep enough to be considered a more powerful relationship among relationships. And this connection should be realized, and treasured, because it is a rarity worth every bit of consideration. Any person that you can relate to on a deep enough level to not only get along with (vastly important on its own) but predict their reactions to events is a beautiful thing among beautiful things.

People are so complex! Even the seemingly simplest person must possess a mind and character complicated enough to stump even the most analytical person. It’s not easy to connect so deeply with a person, but the resulting treasures are absolutely invaluable. And yet even among the most familiar of friends, two people who have shared themselves with one another to the deepest of their abilities, there must be an unimaginable amount of inner thoughts and feelings that can never be truly expressed, and even more so that can never be truly understood. Imagine your own mind—how many thoughts are constantly stirring, how many feelings are welling up inside you at any moment of any day, and consider how few of those thoughts and feelings you have actually shared in their rawest, deepest form with another person. When you assume that any other person your gaze falls upon has just as many thoughts yet to be shared, then surely you will be awed by the enormity of even a single other mind and the bountiful treasures there to be known and shared. And what better measure is there of a life’s fullness than how many people really connect with it, and to what depths they truly understand it? Of how many lives are touched positively by the influence of another? Of how many hopes and dreams are reinforced by the connections with similar peoples’ pursuits and the sharing of mindsets that can mutually assist each other?

But in the end, as much of a difference as it may make upon the cherished people in your life, no amount of understanding and familiarity can truly bring them into your head, into the deepest depths of your mind’s wanderings. They will never know how you truly feel about any single thought you’ve ever shared with them, despite any number of years of faithful friendship, kinship and/or love. They simply can’t, as you simply can’t truly experience theirs. Just as every person lives their life alone, utterly and completely, locked within their own mind’s interpretations of the perpetually unfolding events that made up their existence, at the bitter end of it all every person will die alone with the sum of their experiences. But this is where the beauty lies… it lies in the trust and comfort of your friends and loved ones, because even though you will never experience even a split second of their true mind, you can feel as though you’ve shared many years’ worth of experiences with its unfiltered acceptance. And the difference between the actual mindset and the feeling of having shared the mindset is, although impossible to gauge, all but invisible when you truly love and trust a person. The trust is of utmost importance here, of course, because your trust is what separates the doubts of whether or not you truly know this person as well as can be known about another separate human being and the euphoric feeling of believing that you actually do. And the demonstrable evidence, such as sharing many interests and beliefs, witnessing their reactions to events which support your understanding of them, enjoying similar jokes and stories, connecting with each other’s thoughts, and even just simply enjoying the comfort of each other’s company and lifestyle, go such a long way in developing such a relationship. You can get as close as is reasonably possible.

You are still living your life utterly alone, however, despite any number of the grandest relationships with your fellow humans as can be imagined. Even if every single one of the dozens of close friends you may have knows you so well that they can give you the most perfect gifts, suggest the best movies and music and books, share with you the most enjoyable memories, and finish your sentences for you, they still don’t know your true mind; they will never know the true thoughts in your head. They will never know the true pain you are feeling at any moment, or the true depths of any joy. Nobody will ever know your true feelings about something, whether it’s a restaurant or a song or a movie or another person or even them. It could be that you have actually shared your thoughts as they truly are, but a person just cannot know this to be true, to no fault of theirs. They have to believe that what you have expressed toward them is the accurate portrayal of the true feelings. Right or not, at its core, this is the foundation for all relationships, and rawer sharing brings more opportunities for this connection to achieve the highest possible connection.

It comes down to so much trust, in the end, and so this trust is, of course, pretty much the single most valuable aspect of any sort of relationship. Because it is an unavoidable fact that one will never know for sure, the next best thing is to feel as if it is for sure, and this can only be achieved if one trusts that you really are sharing with them the closest thing to the actual reality of the situation as possible. Have you ever shared an inner thought with someone who refused to believe that it was real? Or maybe you have shared a false thought with someone who did not even hesitate to take it as truth? The more clever and devious people can make quite a living from this extreme of trust and many, if not all, of the people might not ever even suspect any sort of dishonesty. And on the other hand a person might be unfailingly honest in all of their sharing and yet face the constant skepticism of their closest friends. No matter how trustworthy you are, a person has no inherent obligation to trust you and it must come from the complex workings of your relationship with them. This trust should work itself out, given enough time and enough honesty and enough demonstrable experience.

But trust is a wildly complicated thing. In the end, the best that you can really do is be as honest and trustworthy as possible while reaching out to find those people who you’ve realized, to the best of your abilities, are trustworthy themselves, and have the capacity to trust in return. You’ll never know for sure, but you will get an ever-deeper and more intricate understanding of them as a friendship grows, and an effective grasp of the depth of this relationship will hopefully only ever increase. The people in your life whom you hold most dear will understand you, down to your core, ever more accurately and deeply as this trust builds. And the same should be reciprocated. As your lives carry on and your shared experiences grow, so should your relationships and the resulting connections that bind them.

And yet you will still be living utterly alone despite any number of the most perfectly formed relationships. They will help immensely, for sure, but they can never truly fill that void that perpetually separates the depths of your mind with the rest of the world around you. Nothing can bridge that gap that divides the entirety of the physical world, including the trees and the chairs and the streets and the computers and all of the other people within it and all of the other thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams that they hold dear, from the abstract interpretations that your mind utilizes to make sense of it all.

And so you need to be comfortable on your own terms. You need to be able to occupy yourself, and enjoy your own company when you find yourself alone for any length of time. You need to understand yourself. Not in the “normal” sense—because of course you’re you, and of course you spend every single moment of your life within… well, you. And that’s exactly the point, really. You need to understand yourself so fully, so completely and fundamentally that you are entirely familiar with your deepest thought processes, your most intricate decision-making. You should have access to all of the activities which will fulfill your personal desires in all of the times when you are alone with your own self. Whether this constitutes reading books, or playing video games, or listening to music, or taking walks, or surfing the internet, or watching a movie, or writing, or calling/texting friends, or housework, or simply exploring the wanderings of your own mind, or whatever else might the case, it is so fundamentally important to be able to live your life, in the random periods where you, yourself, are your only company, just as fully as if it were being spent with a crowd of fun-loving friends. The specific experiences will differ, of course, because you can’t really enjoy the festivities of a burgeoning social gathering when only you are around, but at the same time, you can’t really enjoy the comfort and satisfaction of a good read while dozens of drunken friends are stumbling around and over you. Knowing and understanding yourself, in all foreseeable (and ideally even the unforeseeable) circumstances, is crucial to always holding within your own grasp the ability to satisfy the demands of your ever-hungry desires.

The same friend who shared the opening quote once told me that confidence is “realizing yourself.” And I’ve also puzzled over this throughout the couple years since it was shared my way. In the end, I don’t think I (or perhaps anyone) could have said it better, or more simply. And how beautiful that is, that such a simple explanation turns out to be the truest and most meaningful of all. To realize yourself, I believe, is to be so utterly comfortable with who you are, with what and whom you enjoy and appreciate in this world, and with what you enjoy thinking about, and with what you enjoy sharing with other people, every one of whom is in the exact same boat as you—cruising along, trying to grasp the meaning to it all while of course experiencing as many shared joys as possible.

The inner workings of life and relationships are so complex because the interests and expectations of people can vary by such a wildly vast degree. This makes truer connections that much more difficult, but that much more rewarding. Because despite all of the possible combinations of beliefs and interests a person can have, to connect with another and intertwine these ideas so finely is perhaps one of the most rewarding endeavors that can possibly be achieved. But a line should be drawn between sharing and conforming—nobody should ever have substantial control over your personal actions. You should do what you want, pursue what you want, see who you want, talk to who you want, hang out with who you want, think what you want, believe what you want, drink what you want, say what you want, play what you want, read what you want, travel where you want, buy what you want, stay up when you want, wake up when you want, watch what you want, dream what you want, and so on (all within reason of course), and any person who has any say in any of these matters should work with you for a respectful, cooperative understanding (because they should respect your history and your fundamental traits!). Anything less screams of mistrust, and therefore eternal conflict, and what else, if not trust, is the general idea in the first place? You can spread your wings together and fly off to whatever heights your mutual efforts can bring.

People tend to reflect on past decisions and say “I don’t know why I did that.” And this suggests a deep problem, because that is precisely the sort of thing that you should want to avoid. You should understand situations, and your own internal struggles, more than well enough to make the properly thought-out decision right then and there, without having to back-track in a confused daze at some point in the future once you realize some overlooked implication. And in those (hopefully) rare occasions when you genuinely didn’t have the resources (time, for example) to really properly analyze, then you should have next to no trouble in realizing, once you DO have the proper time to consider, precisely why you acted in some way. You should be able to reflect on some unfortunate outcome, and on its causes, and think to yourself, well I did that because (insert informed realization here). You should never ultimately not know why, if you truly understand yourself. And if you find that you really don’t, then you have a fresh goal to improve upon. Reflect on what this insight can do to assist your well-being in the future so that you can make the right decisions at the time of reckoning.

I’ve always been intrigued by that oft-repeated phrase, “everybody dies alone.” Many curious thoughts have been exercised in wondering about this, about the many various contexts in which it is used, and what it really means for us. Other peoples’ mindsets will always remain second-hand knowledge to you, at best, and yet at absolutely every last single moment you WILL know what you yourself is thinking and feeling. And that makes the concepts of deep friendships and true loves so overwhelmingly incredible, that you might understand another human being so well as to connect with them at a level deep enough to get along and understand each other beyond the interactions of the vast majority of the people you will ever meet in this world.

And yet every single last one of us, despite any number of everlasting friendships and true loves we’ve made along the way, will die utterly alone. Completely, entirely within our own consciousness, alone with the sum of our vast collections of experiences and thoughts and beliefs and feelings, joys and sorrows, successes and failures—every single last bit. And yet there will probably be many people at your bedside in the final days, at the bitter end of a life long lived, trying their best to enjoy their final moments with you, trying to provide comfort to you, and to themselves, trying to glean the best of the final moments that your physical existence has left in this world.

And still you will die alone.

But not necessarily lonely, which is the essential key. You could have spent the most fantastic, fairy-tale-incarnate life imaginable with a significant other, and raised a houseful of healthy, successful children now living at least as much of a wonderful life, and have a host of diehard friends there to be with you for every last breath that they have the opportunity to witness, and all of them may hold you in the highest possible regard right up to those final moments, and still you will die alone. Alone, but yet in the most wonderful company a person could reasonably hope for. And the incredible thing here, what makes this entire idea so resonant in its beauty, is that you can live an entire life locked within the confines of your own head, forever aware only of what your own senses convey to your mind, understanding only of what your own mind is able to puzzle out of experience, appreciative only of what in your own experience is able to be understood. And yet all of these people want to be by your side, in the end. They will want nothing more than to show you, at the very end of it all, that they truly cared in some way. That they appreciate the life you have shared with them, even if the closest thing they ever experienced to your truest self was the briefest occasional glimpse into the true heart of your consciousness through a deep, honest, compatible relationship over the span of years that you were entitled to enjoy together.

And so, even if you really are entirely alone inside your own mind as the very last vestiges of your life flicker away, you will be able to relish in the joy that you shared such a full, joyous life with so many people who are there with you in the end to provide care, and love and comfort, and to let you know that you are not alone in the physical sense; you have made impacts, you have shared memories, you have divulged thoughts and feelings from deep within yourself and have been the recipient of so many similar thoughts and feelings that others have been more than happy to share with you in return. And I can only imagine that these precious connections, as intangible as they are, are perhaps the most valuable things that can be achieved in this life. As utterly alone as any of us are as we experience this miracle of life, the only real thing that we can ever be sure that we have truly experienced to its fullest, we will bask in the warming light of companionship at the end of it all, and know that we had been basking in its light the whole way all along even if it felt at so many points as if nobody in the world really cared or understood what we were going through at any moment

We are all alone, alone on this perpetual current of life on our individual little rafts, tossed and turned over so many waves and random turbulences, but we have the capacity and the will to meet up with as many other rafts as we can make time and effort for, and share in the incredible experiences that it will never stop sending past us. Being alone does not have to be so lonely if you are willing to cast out your rope and link up with as many other similarly lonely people as you can stand, and enjoy your loneliness together.

Posted by Unknown | at 10:15 PM | 0 comments

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