NaDruWriNi: Owed Post 1

[tetsab]

Drinking: Homemade Sangria

I've mbeen meaning to write 3 posts for an increaing number of weeks (as usual, I'd just like to note ta this point that I'm actually not at all "Dru" I just can't type to save my life and make typoes all ofver the bloody place as a natuarael [igh] course of life).

The 3 things I've been meaning to write about in the worder they occurred to me are:

1. The Prophetic Vsion Wroght by Zarathrusta
2. Happiness and the DSM-V
3. Despair aned Loneliness

The good news ofr alla youse is tht the Despair and Loneliness I'd write now is very different from the one I'd write at the time it first occurred to me (at the time it would have occurred it would have been much moe viseral and unpleasent... this one will be more like the thing I'd normally want to write about).

And, even thoguh it's the last of the 3 that I thought of it's acutally foremost in my mind right now 'cause earlier this evening I found out that a distnat friend was currently experiencing something fairly akin to that as ao i so it's flown to the forefront of my mind.Sp, er, without furthr ado, typeo-riden [yargh]

Let's start with the loneliness since if you were to ask me alst last week I'd say that despiar dwells in the house of loneliness: meaning that a s long as you are connected to others in some small way you can conquer (or suffer?) the lack of hope (where de-spair is, at its core, no-hope) as long as you have others to carry you through that, others who *will* carry yoiu thorugh it.

(And, if you'll let me continue with that image for a smidge: you'll swee see that the ohnlie etymological deictionary wants to link you to "speed" as a "see" reference in connection to "hope" where what lives with the "spe*" is success, prosperity, advnacement, thriving, increase, etc., which you can all sum up as a sort of UP! UP! UP! such that if you "de-" all oof of that you get failure, poverty, retreating, withering, decrease, etc. you get all that is down...down...down. You'll also see that "some" want to connect "hope" with "hop"... to spring, to leap, to dance, to skip! When I see all of that what I see is to be *enlivened*. To despair is to go down, and in the msot severe of cases, to go down to Sheol. But say tha tyou hve reached a place where you are hope-less [not a typoe: hop-less], where you are life-less if you have others then *htey* can lift you up, put you ojn your back and caryr you [oh noes.. now I'm thinking of Footprints!]. At that moment as down as you would have been you've been lifted up and you will go on because they can go on]).

Now, though, I decouple the two. You can b e lonely and not despair -- I know that 'cause I lived it. Or, to be more c lear, you can be *alone* and not despair since that's really more like the thing I've lived. Now that I'ev not been alone for a long time and foujd it a good I've lost a fair bit of my capacity for seening being alone as a good (not totally, thouguh).

That said, I haven't thought gdeeply about th e difference between being lonely and being alone. I know that man y here know the chan e to be alone as a good (most understanable in the phrase "alone time") and I know a fiar few others experinecing loniness loneliness as a bad (a unwillng disconnection, an unwelcome seperation). As a kid and then a teen I spent a not insignificant part of it being alone and counting that as enither a good, nor a bad but an *is*. I was alone but not a so-called "loner" per say -- whenever others randomly fell into my life I enjoyed their presence for the ranodm time they were there and then they'd randomly go off again and that was OK too (this is a topic I've been meaning to write on for far more that a few weeks, very strongly tied to those hope and cares I was mentioning 3 months ago).

Loneliness is not nessisarily releated to being alone. It does seem to be related to being lone -- to feeling impossibly singular (to feeling like you can be aprehended by no one else out of that singularity, to be misapprehended or misunderstood). The web radio station we're listening to right now just played the Cure and that makes me think of hte magic of music for those who feel alone. In music they find they're not only not alone -- they hear and understand themselves in the art (no debates on the artistic quality of the Cure for now, please) ;) of someone else -- but that this piece of art is loved by so many unknown others who esxist out there as an oopportunity: as some random person who could ranodmly wahs wash up against you at any moment, understanding.

But, even then, I still think it's possible to be lonely and not despair. You see it all the time. You even see the hope that they will not be lonely as one of the ohopes carried in this state. So despair does not nessiscarily live in the house of lonilness. Instead, I strongly appreciate the idea that despair lives in the house of the un-possible. Once all (as in, everything, in contrast, to say, the major things) you hope may be possible is gone (or felt tobe gone, whether "really" gohne or not) what do you have then? The chance that some other may help you see that you're wrong? (A fortuitous strnager beofre you leap onto the train tracks? Or, much easier, a loved one who understandns enough of you to help reigntite reignite your possiblities (the igniting image goes well with the ups of before: sparks fly).

But how about if you have neohgh enough of a sense of self (where have Icome from, where am I going?) to refind uour own possibilites? ("Sometimes the inventiveness of human imagination is all one needs to come by possibility..."). I think the ones best able to find those are not by nessistity the ones who are'nt alone (whtehter that's alone as a state of fact, or lonely as a state of being), but the ones who can turn over the ashes in themselves and find the sparks still hteere.

Not quite the end I wanted to get to here (bit too rushed, far too trite) but certainly in the neihbourhood of where I wnt to go ahyway after the start of tonight.

(And, speaking of where I'd wanted to go in the bigger NaDruWriNi since sense I won't be getting there either 'cause its it's taken me about 4 hours just to get this out between the great abundance of other wimind wondering wandering I've been up to!

Comments

[lil_m_moses]

I have Thoughts on this topic, but need to ponder them a bit before having much coherent to say. I feel the difference between alone and lonely, though the two frequently overlap for me. Lonely usually comes with a (un-)healthy dose of despair, at least these days, that I get periodically better or worse at hiding from others (and sometimes myself). I don't know if I'm finding ashes at this point or just going through the momentum of motions that my earlier actions started. I often suspect the latter.