I am self-isolating, as most people are, or should be, during the pandemic; but I’m more isolated than most because I have no family or friends with whom to share my isolation.
Most people find living in such intimacy with their family and/or friends stressful because their relationships are as competitive as they are co-operative. Siblings compete for the love of their parents, and the more friends have in common, the more they’re also rivals. Isolation exacerbates these conflicts, constantly reminding people of things about their friends and/or family that they usually ignore or overlook.
I don't have enough in common with other people to make us competitive or co-operative. Other people always deferred to me, and asked me to tell them what to do; but they never did what I told them. So I went for weeks without seeing or speaking to another person long before the pandemic.
Aristotle said a man who’s unable or unwilling to live in society must be either a beast or a god. But we must live alone, because society's an illusion. We pretend we're all fundamentally alike, and there's a society to which we all belong; but we're alike in that each of us is unique.
The people with whom I had the most in common were never my family and friends. They were people I knew only through books or other works of art. But I never made Holden Caulfield’s mistake of wanting to know their author. I knew the person who the creator seems to be from his creation is never his real self, but the self he’d like to be and/or imagines his readers would like him to be. We all imagine the person we’d like to be; then we either pretend we already are that person, or we love someone who seems to be that person, or believes we are that person. Our best companions are always imaginary.
No comments:
Post a Comment