Small Windows Into Inner Worlds
The ways we’re innately alone, even as we seek connection
I love hearing couples’ meeting stories — the serendipitous moments and instant connections. That special contradictory feeling of both comfort and excitement. It’s one of the loveliest things about people, this ability to connect with one another for no apparent reason.
Social connections — with friends, family, a life partner, the community — are important to our mental and physical health. We’re social beings, and we need these connections. Yes, even a phone call with your grandma could be extending your life (even if it doesn’t feel like it). But I wonder how meaningful these connections are. Sure they’re nice, but do they really make us less alone?
If you measure ‘aloneness’ in practical terms, then having friends, family, and a partner does make you less alone. You’re more likely to have someone cook you a meal, or pick you up from the airport, or congratulate you on an achievement, or come to your birthday party, or hold your hand on your deathbed. Personal relationships provide company, assistance, and a feeling of being loved — that’s indisputable. It’s important to have that support network.
But I’m not talking about that sort of aloneness.
I’m talking about the aloneness that we all share equally — one we’re born with and that can’t be changed. It’s the aloneness that comes from living inside our own thoughts. It comes from the guarantee that people will come and go from your life. It comes from having ultimate responsibility for your behaviour and choices, and for giving meaning to your life. I’m talking about Sarte-style aloneness.
“One can will nothing unless one has first understood that they must count on no one but themselves; that they are alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of their infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one they set themselves, with no other destiny than the one they forge for themselves on this earth” — Jean-Paul Sartre
No one else has responsibility for your life
Ok, obviously this doesn’t apply to babies. But as a child grows into an adult they gain accountability for their actions, that’s basically what being a grown up is. At exactly what point we become ‘adults’ varies, but it’s likely that by our 20s we will have taken on adult responsibility, and life’s consequences have become our own to deal with.
In these decades of being an adult — through choice or circumstance — we will run into life events with negative consequences. Things like financial hardship, injury or illness, failures in endeavours or personal relationships. Part of being human is sometimes doing the wrong thing (dust off that list of regrets, folks).
Our support network can provide practical help and be an emotional shoulder to lean on, but they can’t absorb the consequences on our behalf. For example, I could help you care for an injury, but I can’t feel your pain for you. I could give you money, but I can’t absolve you of legal responsibilities. I could hold a box of tissues but can’t un-break your heart.
We each create our own life’s meaning
If you don’t already know this, I hate to break it to you — but life doesn’t have innate meaning. It’s something each of us has to create for ourselves. Some of us find meaning through achievements or experiences. Some through helping others or creating things. Some through just marvelling at the wonder of it all.
But my point is you can’t ask your Dad or your girlfriend to give you a life’s purpose. For it to be fulfilling, it has to come from within. You can take advice and inspiration from others, but ultimately you must choose which path to walk. And whether or not it’s the right one, will primarily impact you. If you spend a decade working towards an achievement that turns out to be meaningless, it’s you who will have to live with that realisation, not the people who told you to do it.
Meaning and happiness go together, so you’re also responsible for your own happiness. It’s possible to have 100 friends at your birthday party and still be miserable. Or have a lovely wife and kids and still be miserable. External factors obviously play a part, but your happiness (or unhappiness) is ultimately up to you. No one else.
You are the only person who will be with you for life
When I first heard this, I felt like my brain slipped sideways — but it’s true. Chances are your friends will move away, you’ll get divorced, your parents will die. Hopefully not all these things at once. But unless you happen to have a twin and some very good luck, there’s no single person you can rely on for life, except yourself.
It’s not because people are selfish or unreliable (although that may also be true), but just that our innate aloneness makes it difficult to walk the exact same path as someone else. If you care about a friend and want them to have a happy, meaningful life, then you’ll be happy for them to move internationally to follow their dream. If you care about your husband then you will give him the freedom and agency to make his own choices, but you may not want their consequences in your own life. And even our most loving and reliable support people will die one day — sometimes in old age, sometimes not.
It’s not because people are selfish or unreliable (although that may also be true), but just that our innate aloneness makes it difficult to walk the exact same path as someone else.
This is all the more reason to have a support crew rather than a support person. When someone inevitably drifts to the periphery of your life, there will be others you can rely on for company and connection. Actively welcome people into your life. And farewell them with gratitude when they leave.
You can’t be John Malkovich
The film Being John Malkovich is about a couple who discover a portal that takes them into the mind of actor John Malkovich. It’s a real mind-bender to imagine being able to inhabit and control someone else’s body. The film’s story highlights just how alone we are in our own minds and bodies.
If you are tall, that is who you are — there’s no way to experience being a short person. The same goes for skin colour or body type or any other physical characteristic. No one knows what it’s like to inhabit your body except you.
It’s also true for our senses: seeing, taste, hearing, touch, and proprioception. We can’t know if the way we experience the world around us is the same as anyone else’s. I can’t imagine liking the taste of anchovies, but apparently some people do. We may all point at the sky and say ‘blue’, but if my perception of the colour spectrum was the reverse of yours, how would we know?
In the Hearing Voices Movement — a support group for people living with auditory and visual hallucinations — they call their experiences ‘nonconsensus realities’ because it’s their reality, even if the ‘consensus’ is that it doesn’t exist. What we call reality (or not) is actually just what is socially acceptable. In cultures where spirituality is part of everyday life, voices are often seen as the positive influence of spirits rather than negative ‘symptoms’. We all experience our world differently, that’s all.
In the Hearing Voices Movement — a support group for people living with auditory and visual hallucinations — they call their experiences ‘nonconsensus realities’ because it’s their reality, even if the ‘consensus’ is that it doesn’t exist.
We know that if you feel a physical sensation — good or bad — you can’t transfer it to anybody else’s body. The same goes for emotion or thought. It lives inside you. You can express it through words, and others can empathize, but it will never be their experience. If I said ‘I think about my lover every minute of the day’ you might be able to relate to that feeling of infatuation, but you won’t be infatuated.
We all experience daydreams and fantasies in our own minds, but you could never tell what they are just by looking at someone. It’s a completely private world we inhabit in our imagination. In extreme cases, daydreams can become more immersive than real life. Even if we share an imagined story, its colours, textures and even emotions will be different for each person who hears it.
“Once I started asking other people about their daydreams, I began to realize that daydreams are like pain: impossible to compare across the bodies of dreamers. Different in texture, different in intensity, different in constancy… It started to seem like other people’s daydreams were secrets they kept hidden in plain sight. They fantasized in front of me all the time — on the subway and the sidewalk, in my classes — but I had no idea what movies played inside their heads, or hummed at the tips of their tongues, perpetually unspoken.” - Dreamers in broad daylight
And that’s why connection is special
It’s because we’re innately alone that I love hearing couples’ meeting stories. Even though we’re trapped in our own minds and bodies — responsible for our own meaning and happiness — condemned to sharing only part of our lives with others. Despite all that, we still sometimes discover a spark of recognition in someone else’s eyes. We have moments where we’re suddenly fully seen. Nakedly known. A window opened into an inner world.
We’re capable of blended experiences almost as if we have one body, one mind. It’s hard not to believe in soul mates in those moments. And easy to believe we’re not alone.
Or perhaps still alone, but alone together.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this, check out more of my (free) Medium articles here: A little bit about me and my writing.
