It is okay to be alone

I own a dress that once made me cry.  It is cream with grey spots and hard-to-reach buttons at the back.  One day, early in my first experience of living alone, I nearly dislocated my shoulders as I tried to ease the last button through the buttonhole.  My fingers felt as dexterous as a bunch of bananas and sweat trickled unbecomingly down my collarbone.  My shoulders throbbed; my irritation swelled with each attempt.  Eventually, I succumbed to a tantrum and wept hot, embarrassed tears of frustration.

I wasn’t only crying about the impractical (but adorable) dress.  Earlier that month, I had gone to a funeral for a radiant, doe-eyed, curly-haired 28-year-old whose sudden death shocked all who had known her.  Her grieving mother had spoken of the frailty of life and told young, unmarried mourners to “stop fluffing around; don’t wait for ten out of ten”.  I restrained myself from proposing to the next man I saw at Caltex out of fear of my impending demise but, that night, my Queen-sized bed seemed to stretch out like the Sahara and I wished there was someone next to me to whisper, “It’s okay”.

Loneliness is a dull ache at night and it becomes a sharp, stabbing pain when there is a dress to button, an Ikea bookcase to assemble and strata levies to pay.  It is easy to construct a frenzied life of social activity to avoid feeling lonesome but I’ve lately begun to appreciate solitude and quietness.  

Last weekend, I retreated to New Norcia to chill with the poster boys for solitude – Benedictine monks.  I realised that, in addition to wearing Star Wars robes and tending to olive trees, monks complete PhDs, strive for social justice, work in remote Aboriginal communities and compile Nyoongar dictionaries.  I also read about Catholic nuns who were suffragettes and pacifists, who were jailed for opposing wars, who pioneered soup kitchens and criticised churches for injustices against women. 

Each day, these men and women spent hours alone but their commitment to solitude and prayer did not lead to lives with scrums of cats, shotguns and rocking chairs.  New Norcia reminded me that magnificent things may arise from silence and contemplation.   

I would prefer not be someone who only feels good sipping Hendrick’s gin in a dark booth while a clever man with glittering eyes murmurs to me, “Yes, you’re brilliant”.  I don’t want to be a person who would rather comment on Facebook photos of someone’s uncle’s hairdresser’s bar mitzvah than sit with my own thoughts.  I want to stop myself from becoming the kind of Christian who only knows what others say about Jesus because I’ve never spent time alone with him. 

“The unexamined life is not worth living”, wrote Plato (or was it Socrates?).  I’m learning to practice solitude and to examine myself and those around me, explore the wells of my consciousness, process events and experience emotions.  I have yet to receive a lightning-bolt epiphany about how to change the world.  In the meantime, I’ll choose not to feel self-conscious about reading a novel alone by the river or drinking a flat white by myself.  If a sagacious man with sparkling eyes asks to join me, I’ll think about it.  It is okay to be alone.