Reflections on Solitude

i must confess that i am not used to the feeling of being alone.
back home in singapore, there are times when i just sit at home and enjoy the peace and quiet - it can be liberating and refreshing. but more often than not, there is almost always someone around; even if there are moments when you are alone they are never for extended periods of time, and u never really feel lonely anyway.
here in london, it is different. apart from being alone most of the time, you also feel alone most of the time.

not that it is necessarily a bad thing. here, i think a crucial distinction needs to be drawn between solitude and loneliness. being solitary - not necessarily bad thing. being lonely - bad thing. people always talk about having space, and the need to be alone. i think all that is true to a certain extent - people do need their space, and people do need time away from everything sometimes. but i think no matter what, people need to feel that they are not alone. people need to know that there are people out there, who care for them, whom they care for, who are somehow connected to them in a metaphysical way. without this, you cross the divide from solitude into loneliness.

there's a corny line in a bad movie which i really like. in Shall We Dance, susan sarandon (who is married to yummy richard gere) says that the whole point about being in a relationship is to have a witness to your life. without a witness, your life would have come and gone and noone would even have noticed. there's no point in doing something if no one is there to witness or share those glorious moments, or those pathetic moments, or even those mundane moments. while this may (unjustifiably?) downplay the importance of self-appreciation or self-worth, i think this is a empirically true fact of human life, whether we like it or not, and i think it applies to any kind of human interaction. no man is an island; even freaks find other freaks (there is DIRECT evidence of this in our office!).
i think the sentiment is neatly summed up in this quote by Pearl S Buck -

"The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration."

in london, there are times when i feel lonely, and there are times when i feel solitary. sometimes it gets me down, sometimes i quite enjoy it. since coming here, i have gotten used to do doing a lot of things by myself - walking around, running errands, exploring new places. those are all fine. it took me a bit longer to get used to eating alone, because eating in singapore is such a social activity, and one that you tend to do with your loved ones. so eating alone reminded me of what i was missing back home, and got me down, but now i am kinda used to it - eating becomes functional, not an event.

i have not tried watching a movie alone yet though, maybe next week i'll give it a shot. :)