The peace we all yearn

How important is communication.
We take the ability to communicate for granted. We discuss things with our partners and  friends with our workmates and the shop assistant and from each we get a dialog which is different but provides us with psychological sustenance, mental nourishment which helps keep us sane.
Some people are always entertaining, always engrossed in arranging contact with friends, and family. It brings them great happiness a feeling of being joined up, sharing not only of their lives but the journey each other person is making.
Isolation is supposed to be bad for anyone. The solitary isolation cell in a prison is a form of punishment over and above having your Liberty taken away from you since the idea of being on your own is deemed punishment.
People throughout their lives are usually in constant contact, the busy person is usually the one in greatest demand like a bee drawn to honey, the sheer activity of the busy person makes them attractive if for no other reason than we are attracted by their frenetic lifestyle seeing in it, some sort of glamour in being busy and needed.
Life's stages takes one eventually through to a shakedown period when you retire and whilst many people not only retain their lifestyle they even increase the things they do on the basis that now they can, they feel they should. The clock after all is running.
I was watching a program of a woman somewhere in South Africa who takes in orphaned animals and try's to rehabilitate them for release into the wild. She had a menagerie of intriguing animals but the one closest to her heart was a young sloth which seemed even more exposed to danger simply because it was so slow to react and seemed so vulnerable.

Slow and vulnerable is a good description of the average over 80 year old, coping as best they can in a diminishing circle of friends and opportunities.

This lack of meaningful contact is a condition we all have to cope with, unless of course we get knocked down by a number 95 bus. One begins with old age to evaluate your own ability to entertain and keep yourself not only occupied but mentally on top of things so that you are, happy with the company you keep, yourself. 

Our lives are made up of minuets in and hour, hours in a day and days in a year and what we choose to do with that "time" is up to us and is personal. It's not the same for everyone but there is often criticism of the way we independently choose to spend our time. 

There are those who view time as precious and those for whom time is a drag. The importance we attach to our lives and the way we choose to live them describes our sense of self being and the value we put on our actions is graded as if more action was in some way more desirable since it was a measure of how we valued ourselves within society. The 'do nothing' is inferior to the 'do everything' and throughout our lives we have been pressed into believing that a busy life was a successful life. 

Not having 'any contact' has its own attraction of course. There is no deceit in dealing with yourself, no play acting, no dressing up. The silence is only broken by your own 'thoughts' and if you are the only one actually interested enough to try to understand them perhaps it's better to be alone. 

Anyone who has been there knows that the silence of the desert is delicious. It is almost felt even tasted and the impression it creates stays for a lifetime. It heightens the senses and sharpens the instincts, it focuses your attention on 'yourself in relation to your surroundings', it brings things into focus. The noise is turned down, the jangling is stilled aa you get nearer to the peace we all yearn.