There is an uncomfortable truth which sometimes arises when we contemplate how lonely we are. The uncomfortable truth is this: we are not alone some of the time—we are, in fact, truly alone all of the time.
There is a kind of cheap, personality type, wisdom, which sells the comfortable lie that we are not really alone, by presenting the false scale of introvert versus extrovert: the implicit idea is that there is a ladder which can be climbed to get closer to people—the extreme introvert hides, and, as we move along the scale, we reach the extreme extrovert, who is energized by making contact with others.
But the path from alone to less alone is illusionary—an introvert is just an extrovert who hates small talk.
And why does the introvert hate small talk? Because they’d rather be alone with their own thoughts than have a superficial conversation with someone.
And this goes right to the heart of the matter.
The scale is not from “introvert” to “extrovert,” or from “alone” to “with someone.” These are actually false dichotomies, or scales. The true scale is the lonely one: superficial to profound.
The brain functions in such a way that all outside stimulation competes with what is happening in our brains, and when the outside stimulation takes precedence, we are having a superficial experience, and when the activity in our own brains is of uppermost importance, we are having a profound experience.
When we are having a great conversation, we are really conversing with ourselves, for within our brains, the back and forth, the inner revisions, the actual creativity and discovery–the thinking itself, is occurring at the speed of light.
But speaking to another can travel no faster than the speed of sound.
Speaking to ourselves—“two people speaking” is literally what thought is—does not find us in a place where we are “really” with “another,” but this is no matter, since we are truly beyond whether we are “alone,” or not. The true dichotomy is shallow versus profound.
So the bad news is, we are alone. And the good new is, yes, and so what?
The most profound utterances we experience are when we hear a composer’s masterpiece, and experience it as such, (some are too shallow for this experience—we weep, they are stone).
Harmony—in music, or anything—is the essence of “togetherness” of anyone or anything. No instrument playing, no harmonizing note, knows it is sitting beside another. So if any two objects (speaking humans or not) are “together,” it is of importance only if they “harmonize,” and so the harmony is crucial. When does harmony occur? By script. Harmony occurs without the objects or people having any say in it. Objects harmonize better than people. People reciting/singing a script in a play, or a musical composition, are turning themselves into objects, serving the instructions of the “dead” playwright or composer. The harmonizing influence originates in the brain of the lone creator, unless objects in nature, non-human objects unaware of themselves, are luckily situated in a natural landscape. A belief that dead things can intentionally harmonize is a belief in God.
The scale from “alone” to “with someone” is a false concept, like extrovert and introvert, though it just so happens that alone, or introversion, is where the genius lives—as they attempt to harmonize within themselves.
Another false trail which deludes us into thinking that being alone is an unwanted, undesirable or depressing state: people assume the genius often has few, or no, close friends, because the genius doesn’t get along with people. We falsely assume that it is a matter of personality. It is not. The genius itself is the reason for any estrangement, not social attributes—which belong to the illusionary world in which people are assumed to interact. They actually do not. We are talking to ourselves, literally. The better we talk, the more we are creating speech in the loneliness of our brains—which is not a bad thing. The genius, the great poet, thinks up those great things alone. Idle chatter can bump up against anyone. It doesn’t matter who it is. If someone makes us laugh, the jokes they offer could make anyone laugh. The conversation does not belong uniquely to you and another.
Likewise in love and sex: We are most in love, most comfortable, when we are alone in such a manner that we are not self-conscious, not worrying about being judged. So it is really more appropriate to say that divine love is when the loneliness, even the complete solipsism of two people, appear to touch. “Mutual” love is an illusion. Two people masterbating (with) each other is, in fact, what is happening in the most intense form of excited, romantic love. Yes, of course, X is kissing Y, but X is kissing—and this is the true act, and X could be kissing anyone, and it would still be kissing, it would still be love. As soon as we concede this, it follows that we are alone, even in love.
Agape, or the highest form of spiritual love, all charitable acts, all divine love in which we “go out of ourselves” to help others, springs from the good person—and where is this goodness? Not in some abstract place, or group reality; this goodness resides deep in the individual person. Why isn’t the unkind person charitable? Because they cannot find it within themselves to be so.
Being happily alone is what fully realizes you and your deepest thoughts, and nowhere does this cease to operate. It is always true. This truth ensures that you are never really with another when you are realized as yourself. You are with them, but accidentally.
This is not to reduce the importance of the other—they are just like you, and are realized, just like you, in themselves, profoundly, just the same.
None of this is bad news. Though it is a little sad, we will admit. (If you think it is very bad news, you have not understood this essay, and you are probably either a shallow chatterer, or chronically depressed.)
But yes, it is true. We are alone.
