'The Afternoon Of Extravagant Delight'

'For the longest time, I thought I knew what being alone felt like. Right now, I'm not too sure if I was just wrong or perhaps I just haven't encountered that feeling of such familiarity for a decent while. All I can say is that tonight, I finally know what being alone feels like. Being alone isn't silence at 3 in the morning nor is it having no plans on a Saturday night. Being alone isn't loneliness.

A distinction has been made between solitude and loneliness. In this sense, these two words refer respectively, to the joy and the pain of being alone. However, the line drawn between has very much attained ambiguity.

It is said that without having access to other humans, you cannot be human. Our culture is closely intertwined with other people and shaped through numerous interactions from birth throughout adulthood. Which is to say that, everything that we are defined as, has been a result of our experiences with one another. However, being around other people is not always bliss though. The existentialist Sartre once said, "Hell is other people." As a great believer of existentialism, I ought to beg to differ why we can't be humans without access to others. For instance, Yogis often meditate in solitude for years and have been regarded by many people as being more sane than the rest of us, who are a society condemned to consuming, to wars and inflicting pain and killing one another. Who is to say then, that someone is less of a human because of a deplete in their social interaction, when others with a multitude of human interactions are behaving more inhumanely?

From the works of French philosopher Sartre, as quoted above, the central preposition of Existentialism is that 'Existence precedes Essence.' In all simplicity, that is to say that we exist initially and then we choose what we want to be. We are first taught whatever those around us believe in, eventually, we either question these teachings - to accept or to reject them, or we choose not to examine them entirely. Ultimately, there is always a choice.

Society has always taught me that we are all interdependent. Time and again, these teachings have brainwashed me into believing the desire to be alone would lead to insanity. Being one with the silence around me has always been more essential to my mental health than being around people who make me feel lonely. At least in my opinion that is. After all, we'd all rather the joys of solitude than the pains of loneliness. In the past week, I have given in to the fact that solitude is unhealthy, that we can't be alone in order to survive or even function remotely. It was inculcated to all fibers of my vessel that being one with what the night brings was really just my cries for help buried by the silence of 3 in the morning. But that isn't right, is it. Who is to say what is right and what is wrong anyway? 

"The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to search for an inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any. The notion of the absurd is the idea that there is absolutely no meaning in the world other than the meaning we give it.

My submissive act of believing that solitude is unhealthy is rather unforgiving. Because now I realize, that an ignorance from the people around me to my cries of help for someone to just be there, drives me further to the brink of insanity than being solitary ever will. And if there ever exists some reason that I am really just delusional, at least I'd be one step closer to the insanity this world already faces.