The Occasional Ensemblee Series: We're all alone.

I sms'd a mate last night with a wee poem I'd just read:
I believe in myself slowly
It takes all the doubt I have
It takes my wonder

With his kind permission, here's his interaction with the poem in the small hours of Tuesday morning:

The loneliness in me is hard to hide, it’s my humanity. I’m lonely when I realise there’s more to life than my own small minded desires and needs; beyond the bounds of my existence there is a vastness my life can never fill or exceed, encompass or capture. We gain nothing real as we pretend to be complete in ourselves. To be a hero and disown our most human aches is a facile denial. Far harder to accept the frailty of time passing like water through grasping hands. Greatness is found by learning not to lie to ourselves. A bravery that doesn’t feel or recognise the anguish of loss can’t honestly be called courage. There’s nothing profound about certain or unshakeable faith; The conviction of our faith is found as we’re rocked to the core of our certainty, buffeted and tried by the vast unknown storms as we struggle to hear the voice of the wind. I am here awaiting. This is hope and it’s a lonely intimacy; I can’t share a map of my heart with you at midnight. This is hope and it’s borne out of my loss. This is hope, that there’s something other than myself.

Loneliness is our reminder of company and a promise that companionship has meaning. If I feel an overwhelming solitude, it’s only because I can remember a time I wasn’t alone. I can’t truly regret something I haven’t experienced. We live in deferral, waiting to be reunited. Held in our humanly discrete moments, we’re hoping to understand the continuum bridging the gaps between us. Loneliness itself is part of the continuum: a reminder, a memory and a longing for all the prodigal moments to return. Loneliness is the emptiness of a heart that’s given blood and waits for time and effort to pump it back around.

Loneliness isn’t the end. Why do we stay alone like we’ve been backed into a corner when our solitude reminds us, is beckoning us to remember all the discrete, abandoned moments we’ve left behind in our search for newer, more thrilling relationships? We’ve been contented with spun concoctions and fragile crystalline ephemera, insubstantial gossamer rewards that can’t sustain our weight instead of the ties that should bind us together. There is no reason for surviving in this moment unless we help each other survive it together.

Let me not be swayed by the convictions of this modern life, that the organic and holistic nature of feeling is insufficient and requires an upgrade. In the absence of anguish we become content with imitation plastic and pacemakers, where once we had a living heart of most human flesh. Let the bad always help me recognise my responsibility to return what is good in my life.