Sometimes the sadness
of life descends upon me….
Sometimes my soul drips
with melancholy feelings to which my words never
do justice.
Sometimes I wonder what the point
of everything I do and aspire to do is,
and sometimes the answers seem
so aloof and unattainable
and confusing
that I don’t even search for them.
This is one of those times.
(ha…this is from 2005)
(I am having a great time going through all these old files man!)
another:
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Why is it that people passing on the sidewalks, in the stores, in restaurants refuse to make eye contact? Sometimes, I admit, I am guilty of this too. Sometimes I do not want anyone to draw me out of my little world, out of my silent reveries or pity-parties. But other times, I feel an openness and a longing to introduce new people to my world. Sometimes I realize that I am the same as everyone else; that we’re all in this together, we’re all fighting the same wars and struggling with the same temptations and problems.
We all deal with these things differently, but even that’s a similarity — we all deal with these things. In the core of our selves, we’re all so similar.
Thinking this as I’m sitting outside of Borders, I’m looking up at each passing person, smiling when they look at me, and feeling a deep kinship with each one.
We’re all alive and I love living things. I wish we could all break out of our little individualistic universes and see everyone this way, all the time. I wish this for myself, most of all.
…okay, will stop now.
No Promises This Time 
I used to feel the same way, about how people who seemingly have a lot in common, and might be able to cooperate on common interests and give each other companionship, nonetheless avoid contact. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that there’s a lot of people I wouldn’t be able to have much more than a superficial conversation with, because actually passions can be pretty specialized. For example, if you read some obscure book, you can’t just talk to anyone about it; most people won’t care.
There are, however, some common themes in life that are of interest to many (for example, love, romance, and the resulting dramas; I think that’s why The Love Boat was so popular). Yet people don’t go around talking about The Love Boat, for some reason. Why is that? Maybe there’s just not much to say about it, because each episode is complete in and of itself and needs no commentary. Also, it didn’t generate a lot of cultural memes (e.g. “D’oh!”) like the Simpsons did.
For some reason, life can feel lonely, even when there’s compulsion to associate with others. For example, in school they pretty much force people to be in groups they don’t want to be in (e.g. they’ll assign you to be part of a project with three random classmates, or assign you to a seat in the classroom or on the bus), and people hate it because they want to get away from annoying douchebags and hostile cliques and hang out with their own cliques who value and respect them.
In homes and neighborhoods in the Philippines, there’s a lot less privacy because you live with your extended family your whole life, and there’s an expectation that you hang out with them and pitch in to help them. People can’t wait to get away from that and come to the U.S. where they’ll have more freedom from their family’s rules, even though when they get here, they feel lonely sometimes. Basically, some loneliness in life feels inevitable, but one could write a whole book analyzing all the reasons for why.
One finds that even when you open up and share with strangers, often they aren’t very accepting. Also, if we didn’t avoid interaction, they might want to open up and share stuff with us that we would probably disrespect or frown upon, even if we tolerate and value living in the same society as them, at arm’s length, where we can cooperate as part of the same economy without having to associate socially. For example, as much as my sister talks about not judging people, she hates rednecks and tries to find communities where they aren’t present.
LikeLike
I feel so nostalgic, reading this post. Walt Whitman. Solitude. Humanness. In the midst of maybe the most difficult segment of my life to date, I’m able to connect with acquaintances who are also new mothers, and suddenly dive deep into The Mother Wars. These feel like secret miracles, like looking into a stranger’s eyes as he/she passes on the sidewalk.
LikeLike