[This might actually become a rant.]
I can't help but be obsessed with this word. It truly completely reflects my state of mind, my state of Being. Who I am. And why very few people understand. Very few people understand because it is one of those things that you yourself need to experience, before you can empathize with others for it. It must pass through you before you are enlightened, experienced. Like drug addiction. Like the death of someone dear. Like Love. We have company in most joys of our life, but these are the things we experience alone.
We experience the joys of Love with someone else, something else but we must pass through its darkness alone. We pass through the waters of knowledge with the World but the journey to find the meaning of things is ours alone. There is so much we must experience, realize on our own, because the choices we will make because of it will be our own. The responsibility will be our own.
What you really want from life is also something you must find on your own. Mind you, this is a very emotional journey. Whenever I think of it, it reminds me of the lonely prisoner of Anton Chekov's The Bet, who spent 15 years in voluntary, solitary confinement. Only he knew the despair, the joy, the frustrations, the liberation, the meaning of his journey. That prisoner is in all of us.
Anomie is usually described as something socially and culturally "uprooted" people experience. The mismatches of the society, who no longer have a culture, a home, or sometimes, even a purpose. As per Émile Durkheim, "a society with too much rigidity and little individual discretion could also produce a kind of anomie, a mismatch between individual circumstances and larger social mores". To me, in manifests in the form of not knowing what I want from life. What's the big picture for me? If I were to envision an end for myself, what will it entail? Will I still experience anomie?
I feel this too often, and I have felt it for too long now, and something deep inside tells me that I will continue to feel it forever. The alienation, the unrest. Anomie. I asked one of my friends today if I will ever have that supposed "normal" life with a home, husband and family. I didn't think my own question would refuse to leave my brain once I had finished putting the words on paper (virtually, of course).
I sometimes think that my desire to live my life in different places all over the world for short periods comes from both the desire to find a home, and also because of my restlessness. Even when I am perfectly happy, I am never content. And I don't know who to ask if this is normal. Does this translate into my ambition? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is this is a permanent part of my personality or just growing pains? Some people aren't meant to be with anyone. Lifelong. Society has different names for them including the free birds, free spirits, loners. Is that me? Can I be loved by someone? Is this a choice between love and purpose? When Love is a part of the purpose of your life, a sudden possibility that the two might become exclusive of each other is purely frightening. As it is for me.
I would love to search my soul for an answer, but I don't know where to begin. Or even how to begin. The answers to these questions lie on some distant horizon which I cannot see.
The most agitating aspect of this feeling is that I don't know if you can drag someone else along with you on this journey which you are to take alone. Is it possible for you to find someone with an equal alienation and unrest who will accompany you on your search? Will they even accompany you, since their nature, just like yours, will not allow them to remain? After all these thoughts have haunted my mind for a while, I conclude that people like me are not meant to be with anyone else. We're the nomads in the concrete jungles of this world. Maybe I am a nomad, but I want to be loved. The possibility that there is no resolution to this dilemma except the difficult painful choice of continuing my search for a home without someone, or building a home with someone, is unbearable.
Is there a way to build a home while searching for a home?
I feel this too often, and I have felt it for too long now, and something deep inside tells me that I will continue to feel it forever. The alienation, the unrest. Anomie. I asked one of my friends today if I will ever have that supposed "normal" life with a home, husband and family. I didn't think my own question would refuse to leave my brain once I had finished putting the words on paper (virtually, of course).
I sometimes think that my desire to live my life in different places all over the world for short periods comes from both the desire to find a home, and also because of my restlessness. Even when I am perfectly happy, I am never content. And I don't know who to ask if this is normal. Does this translate into my ambition? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is this is a permanent part of my personality or just growing pains? Some people aren't meant to be with anyone. Lifelong. Society has different names for them including the free birds, free spirits, loners. Is that me? Can I be loved by someone? Is this a choice between love and purpose? When Love is a part of the purpose of your life, a sudden possibility that the two might become exclusive of each other is purely frightening. As it is for me.
I would love to search my soul for an answer, but I don't know where to begin. Or even how to begin. The answers to these questions lie on some distant horizon which I cannot see.
The most agitating aspect of this feeling is that I don't know if you can drag someone else along with you on this journey which you are to take alone. Is it possible for you to find someone with an equal alienation and unrest who will accompany you on your search? Will they even accompany you, since their nature, just like yours, will not allow them to remain? After all these thoughts have haunted my mind for a while, I conclude that people like me are not meant to be with anyone else. We're the nomads in the concrete jungles of this world. Maybe I am a nomad, but I want to be loved. The possibility that there is no resolution to this dilemma except the difficult painful choice of continuing my search for a home without someone, or building a home with someone, is unbearable.
Is there a way to build a home while searching for a home?
3 comments:
Sometimes I think half the problem is that people who really experience anomie but continue wandering love people so much in general that they want to meet/experience/see the entire world.
I ask the same questions, just not as prettily as you put them here.
Our own loneliness borne of our distinct spirit is our own. In that we are not alone. We share the pain, the guilt, the unrest, but not the unique identity. But the Being in pain and guilt and unrest IS Love. You are loved by all who have done what you have done...looked at the Self, cowered in fear and begged for strength to continue Seeing and Living.
Wonderful insight. Thank you, you both!
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