Compromise v Isolation

Subject: Compromise v Isolation

Life is often a matter of extremes, where compromise is hardly in play and ones decisions are based on what might be called self preservation. The problem is that the self you've preserved is damaged in the process.

We all to a greater or lesser extent play a life of charades, of appearing to be what we aren't, of searching for ways out of situations that have grown into something that couldn't have been foreseen. Only in a tiny proportion of people is this a bad thing, for most of us it's like ageing. With age our lives seem to progress into a semi comatose state where interference, by anyone, becomes, not actually unbearable but a constant reminder that things are not as you wish them to be.

Silly things become an irritant which grow into an unnecessary argument and your search for space and peace of mind leads to excesses, perhaps too much drinking, too many nights out.

Solitude can be a solution, it provides space and tranquility, it relieves the person of the opportunity for having to deceive anyone, (but themselves), it reduces all the actions we take to those described as 'self centred'. We enter into a sort of slow motion film, where everything is un-contested and the flow of life becomes quite peaceful.

Of course without 'conversation' one hears what can only be described as ones own thoughts, perhaps this is no bad thing having been spun, many years ago a lifestyle which might be wholly at odds to your own. We all fall into the trap of social monogamy, it's a construct set up to protect the child and the individuals engaged in bringing up that child. It's based on vows which are supposed to last for a lifetime but over time, lifestyles change and the proposition  we took at the altar now seems out of date.

If we had a plan, it seems a long time ago, when our idealism was more fervent, the fact is, most of us didn't have a plan, instead things would work out along the way, adapting as we went. 

And so in our self imposed 'solitude', the final adaptation, everything at last comes full circle, our abstractions finally more truly representing the real person and not the social construct everyone wishes us to be.

Isolation then is the final salvation, so long as we use it correctly. The 'principles' by which we tried to live our life were our own, let's hope we haven't drifted too far away from them.