We Are Not Alone

We are not alone. Or are we?

It sounds more like a question when you hear it. It makes one believe when you hear it. It makes us believe that we indeed are alone.

But when you write it down, it makes us deny. Memories start appearing of friends who stood beside us, who called up just to ask are you okay, who were there (somewhere), of our parents who have always been there for us in sickness & in health.

But have you ever wondered what makes us think that we are still alone? It’s because of the simple reason that we indeed are alone.

And if it wasn’t the case, then the social networking sites phenomena would not have happened.

We feel alone that’s why we want people to know what’s going on in our lives from our timelines/statuses etc. We feel alone that’s why we check every now and then whether someone has pinged us or not on WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. We feel alone that why we can’t stop ourselves from replying to the person who has commented on the picture we posted just minutes ago.

Some people confuse between Freedom and Aloneness.

“Freedom is the power which lets us do things in peace, not in aloneness.”

We don’t feel alone when we are reading our favourite novel. We don’t feel alone when we are watching our favourite sitcom online or

when there is no one by our sides.

We feel alone when we feel that -

Nobody will listen if I shout,

Nobody will bear me if I act rudely,

Nobody will talk to me if I don’t message them first.

‘These are the feelings of aloneness.’

What is aloneness if you were to ask me, I wouldn’t quote an oxford or a Britannica encyclopedia?

Rather I would simply say-

Aloneness is that friend of yours who you always think about but who never do think about you.

To put it simply just imagine yourself in the center of the football field with people all around sitting in the stands with their friends and family but nobody is looking at you.

This is what aloneness means-

Aloneness is that noise which only you can hear.

Here I mentioned aloneness as a friend of people who just listens to them like no other person does while a person vents his sorrows, frustrations, anger; He is their only friend with whom they can celebrate and enjoy in silence.

A bitter sweet friend who didn’t want his friend to catch himself to others. If you are still wondering who these people are, where you can find them then I can assure you that they are around you, perhaps you even know them. These are people known as extraordinary, freaks, gifts of mankind or legends.

A recent study in the field of psychology says- ‘More intelligent people don’t do well socially. Geniuses just don’t feel understood

by people, so they withdraw themselves from society. Their interests and priorities are usually different from those of their

peers, colleagues and even family members that make them act distant.’

Consider all the people who have reached the pinnacles in their respective fields you would find most of them either recluse or alone.

It was this feeling of emptiness and isolation that set Gautama Buddha on the path of enlightenment, which inspired a lot of Robert Browning’s work, which inspired the essays of Charles Lamb among other great things.

‘It was this discipline of aloneness which helped these great leaders not only earn fame, respect & recognition for their work but in a way also helped them build solitude into their lives.’

“If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.”Leonardo da Vinci

All good things should end with a story!

Thousands and thousands of people had gathered just to get a glimpse of her before she passed away.

People called her ‘The Mystique’, ‘The Invisible Lady’.

Actually, who wouldn’t?

To the people of Canada, she was still the same beautiful women that she used to be forty years back because people had only seen her that way.

Yes, the most powerful person in the whole of Canada had been hiding from the world for close to forty years in her apartment with her only companion being her nurse and her vast collection of French dolls. So why did she shut the door on the world for almost four decades?

In the early morning hours just before her death, she called the press in her hospital room to finally give some answers to the questions people had been seeking for ages. The answer that came was as shocking to the world as was her self-imposed exile.

‘It isn’t that I am mad or strange or unhappy, I just happen to like my own company.’

Shortly after saying that she indeed passed away. Even after her demise, she still looked happy alone, the only difference between now & then that now there would be no one to disturb her anymore.

Her statement which released next day caused much uproar in the entire world with people calling her mad, strange & even psychotic.

The next day where in the front pages of major newspaper her demise as the head of one of the most powerful & respected conglomerates was reported with the same image of hers taken forty years back and forty years later, what most people still failed to notice was the same bright smile that hadn’t changed in all these years.

Just think of it this way, isn’t it funny- ‘People spend hours every day looking for or tending to their relationships, but to have good

relationships with others, you need to have a good relationship with yourself, and for that, you need to know yourself. And how do you get to know yourself?

By spending time with yourself.’