A Path of Lonliness

Deep within the centre of a crowd, It feel alone. There is no sense of attachment, of belonging. I am engulfed in a sphere containing only myself. I float around my fellow earthlings, observing, even understanding, but not relating to the activities they indulge in. I struggle to understand who these people are, how they all know each other so well, how they have so much to talk about.

I find myself asking if I'm on the wrong planet, what it would take for me to become one of them. But then these people come along from time to time whom I connect with. It's then that I realise that there's more of us, but we just tend to conceal ourselves in a world within a world.

I've been living inside my sphere for a long time, short enough to retain still the basic social survival skills but long enough to forget that sometimes there are emotions involved. I could tell when in retrospect I noticed myself doing the bare minimum of chit chat,

A Pocketful of Peace

Why is it that people have this need to get together with people and engage in an activity? What are they trying to tell them: I think you're interesting enough to meet, but not interesting enough to spend time with so let's find something fun to do when we do meet?

Whatever happened to sitting and talking, just catching up? People now have too much to hide, different personae, different opinions of the same things to be used as suitable. They have no more thoughts of their own, and they have the fear of becoming known as "that guy who thinks he know how to fix all the problems". Now, when we talk, we complain. There's never enough time, enough money, the stress is killing us, the boss is an idiot. All we now want to do is to forget.

Sure, there's a million other things to talk about: sports, politics, the hot chick that serves you coffee everyday... but at the end of that conversation, nothing's really changed. You're the same, and the friend that mutually bored you is the same. But it sure seems like you had a great time. Why, you forgot there was anything wrong with your world at all.

What if there was nothing wrong with your world? If that's just the way things are now, but they weren't always the same, and they don't have to be. Is that not a fact? Wrong and right are, in the end, subjective. There will always be people better and worse off that you, in any given opinion.

We seem to have held on to the concept of friendship for that primary reason: to help forget. Everything else, we seem to be doing just fine by ourselves. To me there is another way of forgetting, and it's by remembering that there is a world out there that is going on completely regardless of you. You can detach yourself from it and it will still continue to move. That thought alone is refreshing.

I find peace in solitude. On the trains and buses, where people crowded around you pretend you don't exist. At the sudden glimpse of the setting sun and the display of colours on the way from work. As I lock the door of my room, taking a sigh. These small moments act as pressure release valves - at least for me. After that, I can take a little more beating.