Feeling lonely

How can I be lonely when I have so much going on in my head. 

Much of who we are is in our head and it's usually only the convivial chatter which we share with others.

Even to our partners we monitor what we say for fear of misunderstanding.

I admit, I miss the camaraderie of your hiking especially with friends. It's fantastic to be with a group of people who you get along with, in an area where you all are fascinated by the sights and sounds. 

To do this on your own needs a camera, note book or a tape recorder so you can bring it all back in the form of writing about it. Of course it's a poor second to actually communicating about it on the spot.

Actually whilst there are times that I feel lonely, it's more a reflective process which in itself is interesting. When you are on your own you learn a lot about yourself  as you interrogate the mood your in. In the noise of a relationship there is never a time to hear your own thoughts as you skip along trying to please others.

One of the things I use the blog for is to be "reflective" about a whole host of things and to share these reflections with whoever reads the blog. It's not so much a place to win an argument but simply to put down a proposition, my proposition and move on to something else. 

It is on the one hand cathartic and on the other it revealing. To reveal something of yourself  especially if you are overly sympathetic to a point of view, always has its dangers since ones own sensitivities can be bruised but it's a price worth paying if the reasoning, like a session with a shrink, drills a little deeper into the issue.

In life there are no solutions only knowledge gained.

Thinking too much of course one can subvert a good intention like taking a holiday. 

Why do we take holidays? Why do we go through so much disruption to get to a place we already know or is perhaps new, to do the things that are not all that dissimilar from what we do at home ?

We used to drive down to Margate. The ocean was a big attraction particularly with the children but the tacky shops and the funfair were their delight not mine. I played a role then but now I have run that script into the ground.

When I come over to SA for instance I seem to be retracing steps that had crumbled through time, nothing as pristine as it seemed. I am now a spectator. The environment which used to mean so much in my life was someone else's stage, not my own any-more.

I remember being severely discombobulated when I turned the car into Plantation Rd and realised I didn't live there any more. My memory bank, activated by habit and with the repetition of so many journeys home and I was momentarily schizophrenic, the warmth of being home fighting the reality of being a stranger had a deep physiological  impact and for a moment I felt truly lonely.

I remember being in Sun City in amongst the thousands, including members of my own family, in the casino and feeling almost manic as I realised I didn't belong. I suppose it was the mental conflict which my upbringing (my parents wouldn't countenance gambling) had instilled and the overriding reality of being amongst so many people who love to gamble. It was only a moment or two but I felt truly lonely.
So loneliness is a state of mind not a physiological state of being. You are lonely not because you are one, you can be lonely in a crowd,  you are lonely when your mind can't make sense of its surroundings.

So long as the mind continues to poke around for meaning within the chaos it is far too busy to be lonely.