On Being A Loner

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

The term pack animal is used to describe a beast of burden used to carry heavy loads over long distances such as donkeys and mules. The term also refers to animals that live and hunt in packs such as wolves and hyenas,

The best example of both types of pack animals is the human. Like mules, most of us put on blinders each morning and carry the load, doomed to spend a large majority of our lives compulsively working at jobs we despise and where success only breeds more work. Ironically, most work so that one day they don’t have to work anymore.

When not laboring, the pack gathers at designated times and places, e.g., parties, meetings, to recite long worn out aphorisms, nod, agree, and seek approval and validation in the eyes of the all-important others, each assuring the other they are not wasting their lives, even though deep inside they know they are. The pack gives one little alternative but to parrot culture and society.

I know. I was one of them.

But that was then and this is now. Now it is hard to find me in the pack because I am not there. I choose to be alone much of the time, choose to be part of no tribe or club or group, formal or informal. Rather, I am now a part of a solitary few, deprecated by the pack as “loners,” a lifestyle that flies in the face of prevailing cultural norms but permits me to set aside dependent emotions and constricting compromises and do what I want to do when I want to do it.

I have never found joy or satisfaction in groups but was loathe to admit even to myself that I am asocial because I am shy, a trait sometimes mistaken as arrogance, but, in fact, is the opposite. I know I am not important and that the others in the room aren’t important either. So why are we there? I hate small talk, abhor pandering, and rejection by the herd no longer has any meaning to me.

I have a handful of trusted friends and two loyal dogs, but I avoid investing time in casual acquaintences who add nothing to my life except the creation of a false sense of connectedness.

I no longer chase. Money. Women. Success. Fame. Anything. I play the cards life deals me rather than trying to stack the deck. I have no desire to impress anyone. I have given up trying to win if only because there is nothing worth winning and, in the end, no one wins anyway.

I exist because that is what life is - existence. I am no longer self-important enough to assign “meaning” to my experiences or believe they have any value as lessons to others.

Temporally, I see life as a series of moments, one after another, a stream of consciousness novel that is interesting and sometimes funny, but not worth trying to figure out what was going through the author’s mind when he scribbled the words. After all, it may have just been a monkey on a typewriter.

I enjoy the simple, when I enjoy anything. I rarely worry. I don’t find much that is important enough to worry about and most of life’s big moves are outside my control anyway. I learned this up close and personal as I suffered the pain, depression, anger, and coming to terms with the death of a very special woman in my life. I also learned from that experience that I, all of us, are the dead walking. Mortality is nothing to be feared but just another object in life’s mirror that is “closer than it appears.” I try to keep that in mind as I move through a day.

I am not happy.

I am not sad.

I simply am.

And I am free.

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything, we cannot be free.”

~ Thich Nhât Hanh

 

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