Isolation and I go way back. Isolation never produced dread. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Whether in familial ties, forced-to-attend social gatherings or religious rituals meant to save the sinner’s soul, isolation served as a constant companion. Isolation was familiar. Isolation was always there.
It wasn’t a need to be different. It wasn’t a cry for attention. It was not understanding jokes others laughed at, or if I understood them, not wanting to. It was not wanting to talk about who did what to whom last week. It was not finding the possibility of rain tomorrow a scintillating enough conversation topic. It was letting the mind wonder when the talking served no discernible purpose.
It brought happiness. It brought time to reflect. Reflection deepened the bonds. Joy was found in its friendship. After all, Chekhov once wrote, “True happiness is impossible without solitude. The fallen angel most probably betrayed God because he longed for solitude, of which angels have no inkling.”
As the years have gone by the mind has wondered about this companion who was always there, everywhere and nowhere at once. A part of the mind had secretly hoped time would push away this old friend. Children don’t have old friends. Adults are supposed to. But what kind of old friends are adults supposed to have?
Does feeling happen in isolation?
“People aren’t really suffering though, are they?” She offered a meaningless laugh as her words hung in the air. Quickly she ran through justifications from which she drew out this conclusion. Objectively absurd to anyone with even an average understanding of the current situation in the country. To this scientist from abroad enjoying island living amidst political and economic chaos, however, incontrovertibly true. The bubble is real. Denial abounds.
“What is there to feel guilty about?” His words echoed through the small room. The sentiment that if one was a have, one need not feel guilty about having in light of the have-nots. A tale as old as time yet seemingly renewed in a cinematic display of privileged ignorance. Time stood still. No words in reply came out. Emotions vacillated. Disbelief. Angst. Horror. Fatigue. How does one respond to madness? If one responds, does one claim the role of a staff member or a patient in the asylum? Who decides?
Does feeling isolate? Does trying to walk in another’s shoes ultimately mean you will walk alone? There’s an African proverb that says, ‘When a mad man walks naked it is his kinsmen who feel shame.’ But for the kinsmen to feel shame they must first feel. Has our modern world entrapped us in a bubble of unfeeling? We the kinsmen. We who watch our fellow kinsmen stand in queues for essentials and cook in the dark on wood-burning makeshift stoves. We who are not yet priced out of essentials whose neighbors can no longer afford milk and bread. For those two conversations to happen in the course of a single day just hours apart is perhaps indicative of how truly ill we have become. We’re supposed to be over the pandemic. But we still seem to be sick. Perhaps sicker than ever before.
Chinua Achebe reminds us of a “saying of the elders that if a man sought for a companion who acted entirely like himself he would live in solitude.” Perhaps in befriending isolation amidst a cavalier search for companionship, destiny was predetermined. Alas, solitude.