The hum of life sits warm around me like a thick blanket. The ceilings here go up and up and up, letting the footsteps of students walking to a fro echo out into the collective consciousness of human life. Bits and fragments of conversation pierce through the cloud of sound like stars, forming constellations of laughter and detail. Amidst this, I sit alone.
Alone. The sound of the word in my mind is loud and poignant as if to announce something that should be avoided. Alone, as if to say you currently are and should not be, as if to say run, as if so say get away from this terrifying, uncomfortable, scary feeling that is being an individual within a crowd. Alone, the feeling that never leaves, no matter how many people stand around you.
We can spend our lives completely afraid of this feeling, this deep omnipresent fear that we may never be fully known. The thoughts in our heads cry out in futility against the glass box encasing them. Alone, as if to say are and forever will be. Legs tired from running, lungs exhausted from losing breath, we move so fast trying to avoid the knowledge that we are alone. We look for something, anything, to take us away from it. From concerts to conversations we try so hard to avoid the fact that we’re all in a constant state of trying to stop a car without brakes hurling us forward into the unknown, into being alone.
Alone, as if to say you are not enough as you are, as if to say look away from the fact that you are not perfect or complete, as if to say be afraid of being alone. Most of us never actually sit with this feeling because we’re too busy running. Like frightened children, we’d rather focus on the many comforts and pleasures sold to us as antidotes to this feeling of being alone. We’d rather fill our heads with constant sound and information, distract ourselves with screens the size of our palms, and sleep it off repeatedly to not feel alone anymore.
Yet all of this only serves to make us more tired, more incapable of coming to terms with the fact that we live individual lives that will never be understood in their entirety. Stopping is jumping off a cliff into what looks to be a dark chasm, spilling endlessly into the unknown of change, into the fact that we are alone.
And despite all this fear, despite all this avoidance of what is an ever-present fact about human life, it is the fall that saves us. It is a deep understanding that we are alone that lets us listen to others, that allows us to fully appreciate life. To understand change is to know that you can’t take anything with you, that despite everything you try to build, the next moment will see it swept away as you move towards new truths. We are alone, like lost travelers on the sea, coming to rest only every once in a while on scattered islands. Yet it is only by knowing the feeling of being lost that our hearts can feel the loving beauty of these islands. They are the friends that deeply understand us, the honest conversations we have with strangers, the moments of sitting peacefully in a forest and watching life bloom and fall. Yes, we are alone, but we are alone with others.
It is the fact that we are alone that makes us human. No one is free from it, even if we like to think we sometimes are. It is the all-encompassing force that makes every one of us equal in the end. We begin in this world by ourselves and we will all leave it by ourselves, and this idea breaks our hearts. But it is only through the breaking open of our own hearts that we can share ourselves fully with others. It is only through knowing that we are truly alone that we can know how to listen to others, to really see them in front of us when they speak.
The space in front of me is beautiful. The soft rays of the sun bless pillars of wood that stand strong and auburn against the day. Metal borders between windows cover sitting people in hatch marks of shadow. The air is brisk, but it is warmed by the laughter of old friends seeing each other after time apart. Yes, we are alone together. We see each other as individuals living life and understand that you are alone just like me, that you love and hurt just like me, and that you’re scared just like me.
It is time again for change in my life. I leave a place I’ve known, a place I’ve recently become settled, and trade it for a new one. I leave love that has made me forget about this ever-present condition we all face and move instead in the opposite direction. It reminds me how much we avoid the one feeling that gives all others meaning. We are alone, and in feeling this we realize our fragility and vulnerability. But it is through this, not despite it, that we are strong. It is by realizing that we can be alone but not lonely, knowing that we are individuals held dearly in each other’s hearts, that we can learn to fall.
I’m scared to fall again, but this full contact with vulnerability reminds me I am alive. It is the full spectrum of human emotion, the combination of joy and sorrow coloring me like a patchwork of shadow and sunlight on my skin. Deep within my fear is excitement, it’s the unknown, the knowledge that I again will break only to know a deeper connection with new people. They don’t often teach you to expect this, to take the good with the bad. Maybe they should.