How to be alone

I don't know how Kottke finds this stuff: a video meditation on how to be alone.

I can't help commenting on this artistic exercise. First, it's long enough that around halfway through, it starts to sound a little desperate -- like the author/composer is trying to convince herself that it's okay to be alone. That doesn't sound like it was her intention, but unfortunately, that is what happens when you go down the "list all the wonderful things" path of discursion.

Second, at one point (and maybe more: my attention wandered a trifle about two-thirds through) she used the word "lonely" in place of "alone." The terms are not interchangable: "lonely" describes a state of mind; "alone" has no such emotional connotation. As Aztec Camera put it, "They call us lonely when we're really just alone."

Finally, she says that striking up conversations on park benches is a nice benefit of sitting by oneself. Well maybe, but as a habitual loner myself, I don't often care to strike up conversations with total strangers. I'm choosy about my company, for one thing, and people who are alone often are alone for good reason, I'm sorry to say: they have difficulty behaving in ways that make others comfortable around them. (I'm not excepting myself from that category, by the way.) And then there's the other side of the equation: who's to say that the other person is interested in my intrusion?

Being with other people is hard for some of us. Obviously practice might make it easier (I'll admit, I think I'm better at it now than I used to be because I've forced myself to be a little more sociable), and in any case the fact that something is hard shouldn't dissuade us from trying to do it. Nevertheless, sometimes you have to understand yourself and your predilections. As a borderline misanthrope (there's a trustful and romantic streak in me that stubbornly refuses to wither away), I've come to terms with the fact that I spend, and will continue to spend, much of my time alone. It's no more terrible a fate than spending much of one's time with others, if that's how you're wired.