My collection of wise, and not so wise, postings

Saturday, 2 February 2013

How to be alone, by Tanya Davis

HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.

you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

To change eachother

It never stops to amaze me how preoccupied we are that people should fit into our perception of an ideal person, a holder of the ultimate personlity. I don’t think I am an exception, even though it would be lovely and ideal and open-mineded and a signal of my unprejudiced self... but I am not perfect, and I an thankful I am not. Besides, I don’t think we are meant to be that opinionless on other people, it would be like carelessness if we were.
My first impression, when I meet someone, often leads to conversations with friends about how I find that person’s appearance, behaviour, voice, body language, gestures, habits (both good and bad), skills... the list goes on and on about what I noticed and find worth mentioning, based upon wheather I instantly like or dislike my new acquaintance.
I tend to ignore (deliberately?) the qualities which does not fit my perception.

Reading what I just wrote, I think, perhaps, I should be a bit worried because I understand I come across as rather superficial. Or not...?

I somehow believe it is part of human nature to evaluate both eachother, and others. We need to label people, to find their role and what part they play in our lives.

As early as 1222 Håvamål, Odins tale - Words of the High one (a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking age) stated that:

Deyr fé,                                     Cattle die,
deyja frændr,                             kinsmen die
deyr sjálfr et sama;                     you yourself die;
ek veit einn,                               I know one thing
at aldri deyr:                              which never dies:
dómr um dauðan hvern.             the fate of the honored dead.
(Quotation from Number 77, which possibly is the most known section of Gestaþáttr)

Even back then they acknowledged a man’s reputation was noted and important.
Mankind has changed, but not that much, in 800 years.

Some qualities are more important in a partner than in a friend, and conversely.
For some reason I think the entertainment bit is more important in a friend, and I accept more outwardness and acting out in a friend, than in a partner. It is just something I do... even though I know we are independent individuals, it is hard not to think that my partner reflects me more than a friend does. He should represent what is good in me. Totally unrealistic, but still. And I don’t think I am the only one who think so.

If he has the wrong tie or wear worn out boots or say things I disagree with, I let him know. But I hate it, really hate it, when he comments upon what I wear, in a way I did not expect.

I don’t like to stand corrected either, so most of the time I try not to think too much about how I comment upon him and his ways.
A friend of mine, on the market for a new boyfriend, told me that she always made sure they never went for a meal on their first proper date.

When I asked her why, she just looked at me with an incomprehensing gaze and stated that: “If I see a man eat, and am presented to all his bad habits and manners at the table; I will never find a boyfriend”.

She might be right. I think to many people that is true. Most of us fall in love because of qualities in the other person, not in spite of.
Most relationships start out great, but then, after some time, one of the parties often try to change the other person into what they think they want from a partner.

Some times even the partner try to change, beyond personal growth, to please, because he or she thinks that is what is expected.

I often see how couples nag and suggest and offer and accept invitations to activities on the partner’s behalf; everything tiny improvements but added up, they may not be compatible with the person we fell in love with at first sight.