To Be Alone...to Love

Throughout my many years on this planet, western society has frowned upon being alone or the so-called “loner”. Since the psychiatrist Carl Jung almost a century ago coined the words “Extrovert” “Introvert”, this originally highly complex theses has trickled into popular culture, and has become a simplified “foundational truth” in the judgement of our fellow human beings.

“He’s awfully quiet. Do you think there’s something wrong with him?”

“Did you notice that weird guy at the party…didn’t say a word the whole night…creepy.”

“Don’t mind him, he’s just shy…he’ll get over it.”

“Unbelievable! There’s that “loser” who never say’s anything…he’s probably a nut case, a serial killer or something.”

“There he is again!”

“Who?”

“You know that quiet guy who doesn’t have any friends.”

We have been told that we are “social beings”; that without social interaction, without the benefit of human touch or communication, we will surly cease to exist. For the most part this is true. For example when the communist country of Rumania fell, the countries orphanages’ were discovered to be overflowing. Out of sympathy and charity, Australians, Americans, Canadians and the French decided to “adopt” these needy children and give them a good middle-class home. What happened with these children, no one would have predicted. Because these children had been discarded when only infants without the needed benefit of a mother’s touch, their behaviour, in most cases, boarded on the psychopathic. In one case, a five year old waking-up in the night, attempted to smother his new brothers and sisters; another young boy attempted to burn down the family home; one young girl of only five or six would fall into a stupor, sitting against a wall and smashing her head against it, over and over.

The issue here is that we need human contact as young human beings because it is necessary for our survival. But the need to be alone is not necessarily a sign of mental illness.

As a young boy growing up in the United States, my quietness was viewed as something to be “fixed”, a sickness that, with the proper “training” could be cured, making me into a “social” being.

My point is that the quiet individual is just that, quiet, and because they choose not to engage, does not make them “sick” and a person to be “changed” for the good of the group. (I’ve always despised Utilitarianism.)

I find pure joy in being alone.

To be alone is to have the moments to create, reflect, produce, read, listen to music, and be with one’s own company.

It seems that the human being in our current society is fighting for recognition, wanting to stand out, their particular words more important than anyone else’s…assertiveness, forcefulness, aggressiveness, extrovert; being the loud mouth is all a way, perhaps, an attempt to feel important, recognized…loved.

In the end we all want to be recognized, loved.

“Being” cannot be qualified as either “inward or outward”, introvert or extrovert, because culture decides it so…we are a complex species, a random mix of DNA, environment, family dynamics and culture including that X factor which some call the Spirit. In fact quantum physicists, neurologists and psychiatrists all now are changing their tune, and are finally admitting that the human being cannot be reduced to a single theory. We are complex and far more interesting than a few current “Noble prize winning scientists” would lead us to believe. Best selling books concerning the notion of God being a fallacy, is merely a feeble attempt to assert one’s own importance, compensation for a lack of…love?

To be a loner and someone who prefers to be alone does not make them a “loser”, someone to be discarded from the “group”.

To love and be loved is the key.