Smirkily self-satisfied on a Saturday night...

or, how I explain sitting by myself with a glass of wine and another television travelogue ...

27 October 2007
Bristol

Here’s my list of things that have irritated me today:

1. Someone who ought to know better, primping around in a tuxedo, organising some theatre bar and entrance for a play that will be both boring and amateurish. The person is around 60 years old, surely old enough that we ought to expect him to behave maturely and not be a party to such self-indulgent silliness. Instead, he prances around in a black tie, mesmerized by some completely inaccurate self-image.

2. Dinner, cocktails, dates, dances, whatever, with inane people. I’m sitting here, on a Saturday evening, in a Bristol apartment, writing something, sipping on a glass of wine, gloriously alone (the wife has gone to visit her Mom and the rest of the family). This is soooo much better than being with people whose opinions I do not value, certainly do not respect and, frankly, do not want to listen to, even if I’m given free alcohol.

3. How much money do you think is poured down the gurgle every night, every week, every month, in every town, around the world, on meaningless ‘social’ events that add nothing to either the sum of human wisdom nor to the life of the individuals involved but represent, instead, another futile battle against loneliness? What if, instead, we spent that money on technologies that counter global warming? What if we spent it on bicycles and more bicycle lanes in our cities? Hmmmmm …

So, this is about loneliness. What you need to know is that loneliness is good for you. It’s another facet of what it is to be an adult, a realised human being. It’s not just analogous to sticking together in a marriage, through thick and thin, not choosing to take the seemingly easy way out, divorcing a partner for a newer, apparently faster model, indulging yourself (notice how indulgence is a feature of this piece?), being an adult involves coping with loss, with loneliness, with failure and remaining an adult throughout, a decent, human adult, a civilized human. But there is an upside, being an adult is also fun and fulfilling. There is no relationship to match one that is fully realised. And how do you define fully realised? Easy, a ‘fully realised’ relationship is simply one where your love and your admiration for the character of your partner deepens every year. A few wrinkles, an extra pound, these things don’t matter, not even a bit.

But, as always, I’ve digressed. I wandered away from the issue of loneliness. Loneliness is good for you. You have to introspect and, eventually, you will learn something about yourself. It’s a selfish time as well: you can read, you can take a walk, go to a museum by yourself, contemplate a painting, a view, an essay. You can lie in bed and take a trip into the back corners of your mind and the side-streets of your memories. An indulgence but not destructive or wasteful.

This scribble has been a bit of a mental wander and is probably both boring to the reader and seemingly self-indulgent but it surely felt good to me to express the feelings. Also, I’m actually right about self-indulgent, selfish, lonely, immature people. And, by the way, much of the time, I’m one of them; you see, not a single one of us is fully realised (if you really are, you are probably not reading this, you’ve exploded in some cosmic moment of incredible self-realisation, quite certainly leaving a considerable mess for your partner and associates to clean up), we just hit moments of realisation. Loneliness is a way to have more of those moments. Learning to love maturely is another.

I do enjoy preaching but must admit that all of it is directed at some element of me and not whoever is my audience (if anyone). Like everyone except those guys I mentioned above, the all-the-time fully realised, I could use the advice.