THE LONELY SUNDAY CHRONICLE

“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.” — Honore de Balzac

A life fuelled with one satisfactory moment after another doesn’t teach you much. If you’ve always had food in your stomach, you wont realize the unflinching pain of an empty one. Similarly if people who love you or at least pretend to love you have always been around, it becomes hard to deal with forced solitude.

Weekends especially become notorious if you have to spend with the one you’ve always been around. Yourself.

I realized this today while watching television couples from Canada choose weekend getaway properties on TLC, a program so boring it could put a fish to sleep. Is it just me or Canadian TV really is that dull? (Take a cue Justin Trudeau!)

Anyway, what are you supposed to do when you have created your entire life schedule in a way that no matter what, you spend your Sunday alone with your better half, and to top it you have a self inflicted strictly no phone policy, barring the few emergency ones, off course.

I am alone this Sunday, watching nauseatingly bad television eagerly waiting for the Monday morning, so that I can fly to a dreary airport and be around people.

This boredom-induced introspection has made me realize that how little value we put on things that come easily to us. Like the air we breathe, things of utmost value have a habit of not making there presence felt, until they are gone and you are left alone with your thoughts, or in case of air, a lifeless body.

I am attached to my wife, like Catholic Church is to virginity. We have this unspoken rule of “No weekend left behind” and no matter how busy we are or how less we see each other or how much travel we do, we got to be under the same roof on weekends. That’s how you survive a 13-year relationship; you really see each other for two days a week. So, practically we have been together for just 1352 days or less than 4 years. No wonder, she keeps saying she hasn’t figured me out yet.

I must say, I always envied my bachelor friends for the freedom they have of not letting someone know how late they will be from work or a party. I envied how they lived surrounded with scattered books and gadgets and nowadays, how they can go run around to locate, capture and train virtual creatures of Pokémon GO without getting a poke in their ribs from their better half.

It sounds a bit obnoxious coming from someone who has always had people around to support and give company, doesn’t it? We were called Homo erectus once in the process of becoming what we are because we had the support to stand upright and not fall taking our first baby steps. We were depended on the ones around us to lend us their support, insight and care to let us decide whether the movement in the bushes was just wind or a carnivorous beast. We evolved due to the relations and connections we made around us with our fellow beings.

We choose someone to spend our lives with, because it’s our evolutionary trait as humans to avoid uncertainty and we always want someone to be around when we fall or falter, sometimes for support but mostly to put a blame on.

So, for all those loners who think a gadget or virtual reality game can replace the company of a loved one, try cozying up with a Geodude while watching Friends re-run on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

As humans, finding connections and making a connection is our biggest blessing and we need to take advantage of that. Feel proud if you have someone for company or to blame and go find one, if you don’t.

Alternatively, you can call me too, I am taking calls this Sunday.