Weddings are overrated. A friend once reminded me that I can afford to say this because I had a beautiful one, nearly two years in the making. Fair enough. Perhaps experience, and the aging that follows it, has a way of bringing certain things into focus, particularly what actually matters in a life.
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| Amsterdam, Netherlands |
The preciousness of a life is not found in the lifestyle built around it. It lives in the way we treat those whose lives we touch and those we simply encounter, including people who can offer us absolutely nothing in return. After all, can someone who does not recognize the preciousness of others, even total strangers, truly understand what precious means? And if they don’t know what precious is, how can they possibly know whether they themselves are precious?
I keep circling back to that word: alone. Nearly two years ago, I wrote that it was a misleading word. I still think so. I hate not its official definition, but what we have made it mean, how immediately we associate it with loneliness. Just because I have chosen to live without a domestic partner or an intimate partner, and genuinely live my life as a party of one, does not mean I am shedding humans from my life. Nor does it mean I am lonely. In fact, it is almost the exact opposite. I feel much the same when I am in a space with others as I do when it is just me.
Actually, I lied.
I often feel much better, and safer, sitting at a restaurant with a book as my companion than with another human being.
So is that wrong?
Why?
Lately, my newsfeed seems convinced that we are all lonely. Stories about isolation and loneliness keep appearing, becoming even more visible as artificial intelligence has entered the companionship arena. Now the chatbot has become something of a villain, as though ChatGPT somehow lured people away from the meaningful human connections they otherwise would have been having.
But perhaps some of what we call loneliness is not born entirely from within. Perhaps some of it is socially assigned.
If you are alone, there must be something wrong with you. You must feel isolated. You must feel lonely. You must try harder to connect with others.
What if we changed the narrative?
You are not alone. You are a party of one.
And a party of one can do quite a lot. Go to a nice restaurant with a book. Sit at the bar and strike up a conversation with the bartender. Sometimes the stranger sitting next to you will start one instead.
Sometimes, I sigh.
Other times, I have had perfectly engaging conversations with strangers whose names I never learned.
Travel alone. There are practical advantages to being the lone passenger, too. When one premium seat opens on a flight, it is considerably easier to upgrade one person than two. A couple hoping to move together may remain where they are while a party of one slips neatly into the available seat.
Even the airlines occasionally reward solitude.
Go wild. Channel the spirit of Lady Mary Crawley, dress like a contemporary aristocrat, and head to the opera. Strangers may approach you during intermission to compliment what you are wearing while you are fabulously sipping Champagne. I have a skirt I call the opera skirt precisely because it has done that.
Movies, concerts, museums, parks. The best companions on a walk may be you and everything you encounter along the way.
Imagine a life without ever having to ask, “Do you want to...?” or “What do you want to eat, do, drink?” A life in which you do not have to ask anyone, but simply live on your own terms.
And when nothing interests you, when traveling feels like a chore rather than an adventure, when a bag of potato chips and Champagne feels like a splendid dinner, you do not have to defend that choice or abandon your plan to retreat into your own space in favor of someone else’s.
Instead of teaching people to fear being alone, what if we taught them that there is already so much within each of us to keep company with? We are complicated creatures, layered, contradictory, constantly shifting. There is so much to learn, explore, question, satisfy, and experience.
If you cannot be serene, comfortable, and confident alone in a room, being with someone does not solve that. It simply gives the insecurity and anxiety somewhere to hide.
Other people can certainly enrich a life. Love can deepen it. Partnership can make it more expansive. But somewhere along the way, we began treating those things not as additions to a life, but as proof that a life is being properly lived. None of them should be the price of admission to it.
What if we started instead with curiosity, and built a life that did not require a plus-one before we entered?
Me, myself, and I have been quite a party.
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