Loneliness: friend or foe?

Some of us know what its like to go through life with loneliness echoing around us like a distant bell. It seems to never leave us, in spite of times when we can almost forget it's there. Or we may have little experience of this particular suffering, until loss or grief or trauma knocks at our door. Then we can forget what our lives were like 'before' this unwelcome guest arrived. Or we may appear to have everything; close family, good friends, fulfilling work, and a happy disposition, only for others to discover with astonishment that we are on first-name terms with this unlikely bedfellow.

Everyone else is taken.

This has been around a long time, but I still find it powerful:

 

The philosophy of Charles Schulz, the creator of 'Peanuts':

 

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.

4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decades worth of World Series winners.

To feel beloved: Poem

　

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on this earth.

'Late Fragment' by Raymond Carver

Untimely: A Moonsilver Tale

We arrived when the moths were beginning to gather. When clouds of hoverflies hung like smoke in the gloom, and the light was fading in a heavy sky. The mansion reared before us, a monolith, oppressive in its opulence and grandeur. Surrounding the ornate edifice was fantastical topiary and tightly clipped box hedges, and a kitchen garden laid out in neat rows. Here and there among the trees were life-sized stone statues, glowing luminous white.

To Dream or Not to Dream

 

Dreams. Those strange, half-life images that entrance and haunt and linger upon waking with melancholy, with sadness, with unease.  Or at other times tease with the suggestion of a magical story that evaporates before I can get pen to paper. Like last night, for instance.

I dreamt I was in a tiny village from which I couldn't escape. Every road out was under deep snow, although the village itself remained untouched. So I passed the time by wandering along the cobbled lane lined with olde worlde shops, peering through their leadlit windows with bottle-thick glass, and the first shop I entered sold smells. Not perfumes, but smells: cut grass, and horse sweat, and the first chill wind of autumn. Immensely frustrating, because upon waking I couldn't recall the wares of a single other shop in that village. I shall have to resort to conscious, effortful invention for turning this into a story; always a poor second best.

Intelligence: what is it?

 

I once read a classic book from the sixties called Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes; about a 'retard' who is experimented upon and becomes a genius, and then 'regresses' again to his original state. It makes the point that intellectual brilliance, without human affection and love, is meaningless. Another book on a similar theme is State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett, following the lives of scientists pursuing a hidden grail in the Amazon. Took me a while to get into it, but then I couldn't put it down.

One of the reasons I enjoyed these books is because I get fed up when I hear people talking about how 'intelligent' somebody is. Growing up in a circle of scientists and academics, I heard it rather a lot. The reason I have a problem with it is because most people - particularly those who consider themselves intelligent - define it in an extremely narrow way; limiting it to levels of knowledge, education, and the logic of the intellect.

Vulnerability: the risks and the rewards

Before I go any further, I must first mention the excellent book 'Daring Greatly; How the Courage to be Vulnerable' by Dr Brene Brown, who says much more than I am about to, and much more eloquently.

I have always been a naturally very open person. I have never seen the point of hiding my weaknesses, my fears, my struggles - such as with depression - from any other human being. We are all in this together, and often derive great comfort from knowing that we are not the only one going through stuff, as well as finding a helping hand or a listening ear that brings some measure of healing.