Aloneness and contentment in Daydreaming on the Porch

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”

Goethe

There was a time starting about 15 years ago and lasting for years after that, when the Internet opened up to the sociable, but in many ways extremely private man that I am, a whole new world of possibilities of chat, messaging, emailing and, in general, reaching out to others in ways unimaginable before the Internet. I made many rich connections and online friends, and many more superficial and very fleeting ones, but I didn’t feel alone as much as before during my youth and early middle age, and time was sucked out of some vacuum and began to stretch out before me night after night in that seemingly endless journey of “new possibilities” I mentioned earlier.

Note the operative word, “possibilities.” That’s what it mostly turned out to be. My illusions about online friendships were revealed for what they were when I abruptly stopped spending all that time on the Internet six years ago, for several reasons, but partly because I gave up my home and moved in to my mother’s house to take care of her as her dementia progressed. There it stands today. I reach out with my photography primarily, and, alas, only intermittently here at Prosebox and Easy Diary. It’s nothing like the heady days of Open Diary when I was consumed with posting entries, leaving notes and reading countless diaries. It really was exhilarating and exciting because I had an audience of people who cared and listened to what wrote. At one point I had as many as 40 diaries to read and comment on. That level and intensity of involvement could not be kept up indefinitely. Of all the people I knew once online, I am in regular contact with only one, and periodically with about four or five people I have come to know and treasure over many years through Open Diary and through online chatting and messaging. It all seems like another life, another world entirely that I inhabited. It’s basically gone now. I’m much more “alone” as I was for so many years. As an aside, before cell phones and smart phones became ubiquitous, I used to actually sit alone on a bench at at park or by the Mississippi River when I lived in New Orleans and just do nothing. No ebooks or Web sites or apps to open. Nothing but pure thinking, daydreaming and feeling the warm sun on my face. You can’t do that in front of a laptop or with a cell phone beeping and taking up your time and consciousness.

Now the Internet still has a way of consuming my time late at night, which is when I have the only free time left to me. But in many ways everything comes full circle again, and I realize that while I have aged and become more mature, I am also still a person who does most things alone – travel, eating out, museum visits, Nature walks, photography – and that I am coming to be totally at peace with that. At age 65 I no longer worry if there will be that one person to share life with. It’s not as important at all. I’ve made my mark. I know I have done a lot of good through my work and various jobs over the decades since the mid-seventies when I sought meaningful jobs and careers.

Today, I still work full time, and I am happy and fulfilled with a free afternoon away from caregiving and work to walk the quiet paths at Charles Towne Landing or Magnolia Gardens. I go there many times a year with my annual passes. As long as I have those places, and as long as I can reach out in the limited but purposeful ways that I do, I am content. The problems of life fade, the happiness of experiencing the profound beauty of Nature, alone and with the life around me at the time, fills me with a sense of rest and relaxation. While temporary, this sustains me until I experience it all again on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, or on a walk to Colonial Lake at sunset in my neighborhood.

Below are two illustrations of me in other people. One is a painting I dearly love, a man looking out over a very lovely and pastoral landscape. The other is a photo of a solitary man walking along a stream. Following those are two photographs I took recently. One is of a portion of a path I love to walk at Magnolia Gardens, and the other a self-portrait taken on one of my weekend road trips far out in the countryside of rural South Carolina.

Those men are me in spirit and camaraderie. We are soul mates, although I will probably never know the artist or the man in the photograph, at least in this life. One of the mysteries of life for me now is the way certain photographs, or certain people in real life, cross my path briefly in very meaningful and non-coincidental ways and speak directly to me as I engage in thoughtful silence or meditation, or through spoken or written language. I believe that when I try to really comprehend these mysteries, I feel deep within me that i am meant to know them more fully, if not now, then later. And that I will.

Last updated May 13, 2016