Easier to Face It

There has been a solitude and quietness in the house today and yesterday that has been missing in the community for the last several weeks.  With quiet comes thought.  Thoughts of the people in the past and present and wonderment of who will be there in the coming years.  I wanted to say some things about the people I have known and the moments we have shared over the years, how they have molded almost expressly who I am, but it's difficult to write about people you know.  Easier to know nothing of what a person thinks of us than to know that we might be hated, or even loved.  So I will pass on the shared moments for now.  Let those be reserved for the times I become an old man and reminisce of good and tragic times.  In loneliness, however, there is no emotional attachment but unto ourselves.

Being alone is not altogether a lonely thing.  In fact we crave solitude when we have had a busy day at work or been around a large group of people, feel exhausted or unclean.  It's a time to collect ourselves internally and externally.  People like me prefer to be alone during particular activities (cleaning, reading and running) while feeling the need to have others around during other actions (sleeping, eating and constructing).  Others might feel the exact opposite.  It's clear that on these occasions we act alone or in groups according to natural instincts of regularity.  But the pain of loneliness is a more touchy subject and one I would like to discuss here.  One word cannot describe the angst one goes through when others aren't around.  We tend to feel at a distance from personal touch, conversation, compassionate love, reason, protection, agreement, disagreement, etc.  It's not that hard to figure out that to solve our emotional distress we must have someone around.  Maybe we need to eat with someone, talk to them, have sex with them, play a game with them.  Fill in the missing links.  It is the WHY that perhaps needs a little understanding.  Humans have had a long history of selfishly presuming they are the center of the universe and that there is an external reason for why we are anything - in this case, social.  But quite a few animals and even plants have been known to survive purely by social networking or symbiotic relationships.  So why do we think we are any different?  Is it the consciousness of knowing we are anything?  What is this consciousness?  Are we any different for having experienced loneliness than would any other solitary being?  This is the reasoning that makes the most sense:

Lee Siegel was a professor of religion and talented magician, an expert on the street magic of India.  In his book, Net of Magic, there is a passage where he says, ""I am writing a book on magic," I explain, "and I'm asked, Real magic?" By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No" I answer, "Conjuring tricks, not real magic."  Real magic. In other words refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic."" Magic is not a bag of tricks and when we are told the truth of how a trick is done we are instantly disappointed.  We love to be mystified. Same with consciousness.  We like to think there is mystery to our minds, that it cannot be understood without adding an ethereal component beyond the trillions of cells that make up our selves.  Our consciousness is not as wonderful as we think.  Our minds, our memories, can fool and inflate what we know.  Our consciousness can change blue cars into red and add events and time to anything, even if it only happened moments before.  Darwinian evolution speaks volumes to why we feel the particular way we do that makes us think we're special.  Experiences of beauty, sadness, peace and frustration, like loneliness, can be reasoned with significant clarity.  To be alone insinuates in our minds having broken from a community that is necessary to our survival.  As simple as that?  Science has reworked the notions of existence based on simple decisions made over and over again millions of times to create something that is seemingly complex but at it's root is quite incomplex.  What would that knowledge do for the individual soul figuring a way out of their angst?  Perhaps nothing and something at the same time.  Our emotional response is both a necessity for our present evolutionary state and a nuisance held over from millions of years of selection.  If we were not pulled toward one another in the past we would not have survived as 'sapient' hominids.  Today we have a much greater chance of survival but at what cost to our minds?  Every break we take from our natural direction in history creates glitches in our psyche.  We are not use to pushing so forcefully against what we have been for hundreds of thousands of years or more.  During these months in the woods, working with my hands and living often in direct account of my days work, I have understood much better the reasons for simplicity in our lives.  It only makes sense with the rest of natural history.  If you are hungry, eat, and if you are bored, make or work play.  If you are lonely then endure the residual effects of millions of year knowing that your pain is only there for the sake of your survival and the survival the brief history that will be man and woman.