First they used to be lonely separately, now they are lonely together!
Photo copyright Suresh Gundappa 2006
Love always brings aloneness. Aloneness always brings love.
They are never separate. People think just the opposite. People think, “When you are in love, how can you be alone?” They don’t make any distinction between two words: loneliness and aloneness. Hence the confusion.
When you are in love, you cannot be lonely; that is true. But when you are in love, you are bound to be alone — that is even far truer. Loneliness is a negative state. Loneliness means you are hankering for the other. Loneliness means you are dark, dismal, in despair. Loneliness means you are frightened. Loneliness means you are feeling left behind. Loneliness means nobody needs you. It hurts. Loneliness is like a wound.
Aloneness is like a flower. I know your dictionaries will say that loneliness and aloneness are synonyms — they are not. They are totally different phenomena. Loneliness is a wound and can turn into a cancer. Many more people die of loneliness than of any other disease. The world is full of lonely people, and because of their loneliness they go on doing all kinds of stupid things to somehow stuff that wound, that hollowness, that emptiness, that negativity. The lonely person starts eating too much, just to feel full. The lonely person starts gathering fat. The lonely person starts taking alcohol or other drugs, from soma to LSD — because he wants to forget himself The loneliness is so ugly, so scary, so deathlike that one wants to escape from it.
Relationship grows only out of overflowing energies, never out of needs. If one person is needy and the other is also needy, then both will try to exploit the other. The relationship will be that of exploitation, not of love, not of compassion. It will not be of friendship. It will be a kind of enmity — very bitter, but sugar-coated. And sooner or later, the sugar wears out; by the time the honeymoon is over the sugar is gone and all is bitter. And now they are caught. First they used to be lonely separately, now they are lonely together — which hurts even more.
Just see a husband and a wife sitting in the room, both lonely. On the surface together, deep down lonely. The husband lost in his own loneliness, the wife lost in her own loneliness. The saddest thing in the world is to see two lovers, a couple, and both lonely — the saddest thing in the world!
Aloneness is totally different. Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart. Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself.
It is the joy of having your own space. Yes, when you are in love, you feel aloneness. Aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is a blessing. But only lovers can feel it, because only love gives you the courage to be alone, only love creates the context to be alone. Only love fulfills you so deeply that you are no more in need of the other — you can be alone. Love makes you so integrated that you can be alone and ecstatic. Love becomes the contrast: love and aloneness are two polarities of one energy.
And it is good to understand it, because sometimes it happens that lovers don’t allow each other space enough to be alone. If lovers don’t allow each other space to be alone, then love will be destroyed, because it is out of aloneness that love gets fresh energy, fresh juices. When you are alone, you accumulate energy to a point from where it starts overflowing.
That overflowing becomes love — then you can go and share with your friend, with your woman, with anybody you love. You have enough to share now; in fact, too much — you have to share. And it is not that you are obliging the other; in fact, you are being obliged by the other. When the cloud is heavy it has to rain, and it is grateful to the earth that it allowed it to rain, that it absorbed it, that it received it like a guest, that it welcomed it. When the flower opens, it has to release its fragrance
It is thankful to the winds that they have taken its fragrance in all directions. When alone, one gathers energy. Energy is life and energy is delight, and energy is love and energy is dance and energy is celebration. Then everything is possible if energy is there. Then it will become a song, then it will become a dance, then it will become love. And when energy is too much there, only then can it become orgasmic.
So when you are in love, a great need arises to be alone — ONLY IN love, remember, a great need arises to be alone. And real lovers are those who give freedom to the other to be alone. They will be full of energy soon and they will come together and shower their energy on each other. When alone, the great desire to share will arise. See the rhythm: when in love, you would like to be alone; when alone, soon you would like to be in love. Lovers come close and go away, come close and go away — there is a rhythm. Going away is not anti-love; going away is just getting your aloneness again, and the beauty of it and the joy of it. But whenever you are full of joy, an intrinsic, inevitable necessity arises to share it. Nobody can contain joy — and the joy that can be contained by you is not of much worth. The joy is bigger than you, it cannot be contained by you. It is a flood! You cannot contain it; you have to seek and search for people to share it with.
Aloneness is interiority, love is exteriority.
Love and lots of it dear ones
Suresh
It seems as if more people suffer from loneliness today or either I’m just capable of observing it in others more now than in the past. Don’t know for sure, Suresh!
I do know when people get hurt in relationships, they are often bitter, angry or afraid which leaves them feeling enormous pain and loneliness. What happens? They either spend their life alone without ever giving love another chance or they heal and move on. Love is worth the risk, any other choice is the real tragedy, my friend.
Excellent introspective piece. You have that ability to reach into the deepest parts of our psyche, I love it.
As always, thank you!
Lovely article, and so true. Two halves do not make a whole. One must be whole within themselves, to truly love another. The quality of our relationships will only ever be as wonderful, as the relationship we have with ourselves. Thank you for your insights, and bring awareness to so many relevant issues.
I remember sitting with a friend in my living room in Portland, Maine discussing my headache. I have been in several accidents so I have the pain dance sometimes. She said, “I am sorry you are in pain.” I looked at her and replied, “Pain is pain. It is all pain, it doesn’t matter how it manifests.”
I have an inclusionary experience of the world most days. (Yes, I know, I invented another word. I was absolutely necessary, I promise)
I teach a basic literature course to students who would never imagine being an English major; some are in college and bluntly state they do not “read”. We study Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Birthmark, a timeless story. When I give background, cultural, sociological, historical and biographical we discuss the reality that Hawthorne lived in a time when it was not uncommon for people to view intellectuals AND artists as evil.
In my readings there is an interesting assessment of this moment for Hawthorne. In order to create he must experience existential loneliness so that he can come back to society and present his gift of tale. There is a second layer of loneliness in that he is also estranged by society for being the writer, artist, and intellectual.
The loneliness topic was offered for discussion by my psychiatrist, Mohammed Ahmed. (Who is on my list of people to marry. I have a long list; it will be a fantabulous community!) I said, it is lonely to be human and I have no quarrel with that but no, I do not have a lover, boyfriend, etc. This startled him. That was curious, by the way. He did not articulate why he asked this but I sensed there was far more but he found himself rooted in “I am a medical doctor”.
Then there is the fact that I spend, outside of my job, immense amounts of time alone with 4 cats and a dog. I am without human companionship. Yet, I experience incredible joy, love, identity, awareness, and plain fun during these times. Some days, I do not.
This is where I am alone, with love, and then I am still physically alone. That is my life moment. I can be love typing these words, chatting with my pet, cleaning my cottage, doing my laundry (I do it by hand.), dishes, cooking, gardening or navel gazing. (A priority in my life.)
My concern is how does this love manifest if I sense it to be in a vacuum in some ways as I live in this here and now.
I made a conscious choice to take all of me to work several years ago. I advise “non-traditional” students in their journey to accomplish a bachelor’s degree. This has exponentially affected my life and I think the experience my students have with me. It is a miracle in some ways, that despite all the blah blah of the working world, these people welcome my focus on them as I share my love, advising, life, thoughts and listen to them.
I have deep friendships with people I might talk to once a year. They are engaged in their daily lives and time does march on it seems. Again, this alone now has questions for me.
I identify with all that you wrote here Suresh.
When I teach literature, I offer up that sometimes a story gives us questions not answers or pat interpretation options. I am having that experience with this piece.
At the same time there is an interesting aspect to my personality I realize after being on the planet for 46 years, I do not get bored. I double-checked this with my mother and she said: Never. I wonder if this is an aspect of being in the interior, being alone from a young age and knowing the road signs. Do you just wonder how someone was born that way? I was born knowing to trust myself also. The rest: messy struggle.
So here are the questions this evokes for me:
What AM I afraid of?
What am I hankering for? (Never mind who!)
Why do I feel left behind? Behind what?
What is this world that despite my ability to be alone is entwined with loneliness?
What is this nagging feeling that is not quite despair but a cousin?
Suresh, thanks for all the questions!
I am off to listen to the breeze now.
Take care,
Kim
Blumoon swiped my thought
I’ve been thinking about the requirements for a relationship lately. I’ve started dating for the first time in several years, and the question lingers for me now. It is the sense of wholeness, a Gestalt in my own personality, that allows me to share myself with another person. It’s taken me a long time to reach this point, but I don’t regret the journey, which I took alone. 
Gee npanth … sorry about that. lol. You are farther ahead than me. I haven’t even begun dating … never married … you could say I am a late bloomer.