How do you respond to being alone?

alone...all one...alone....all one...

I'm rarely bored when i am alone unless I have been so for a couple of weeks. After a couple of weeks i begin longing for company. After i get company i begin longing to be alone. It's funny isn't it? Come here. Go away. Come here. Go away. I thoroughly enjoy the company of others and I thoroughly enjoy being alone. I absolutely love communal living, sharing meals, group conversations, a warm body cuddled up next to me, yet I also love the quietness of an empty house, being able to spread out across the whole bed. Food is best shared, I don't much enjoy eating alone and in particular cooking for myself alone is not much fun. Cooking is a short lived creative act, it can only be shared in the moment and i like to do things for others more than i like doing things for myself.

That's funny isn't it? I would rather do things for another than for myself. Even the things i do when I am alone are considered by me to be being pursued for the benefit of others. I find the greatest reward in enhancing the lives of those around me. If I can make their lives better then mine will be better by association. So I am usually actively working, thinking, creating and trying to find ways to enhance the lives of those around me in the hopes that bringing their level of happiness up a notch will then bring my happiness up a notch. It hasn't actually worked out that way, but i like the idea nonetheless. Approaching life with that attitude makes me happier than when i have pursued things for my own benefit. I find i am benefitted by the outflow and it doesn't much matter to me what i get back. 

It turns out that when I am alone I don't actually want much. I am happy with very little. I have actually found that I can live happily on a few thousand dollars a year. In fact happier than when i was making a few thousand dollars a week. Even though I might pursue things for the benefit of others I often do so alone, and as much as I relish that moment of appreciation when it becomes clear that I have truly enhanced the life of another, I can only take so much appreciation and then I want to get back to work, even though albeit alone.

So into this is thrust the idea that we are all one. That we are never alone. Yet there are few among us who would gladly trade our solitary domiciles for a communal living situation, for instance bunk beds in a big hall. I prefer to eat what i want to eat rather than what is easy to fix that pleases the majority. I want to have my intimate environment organized in a way that pleases me and though I am willing to accomodate the needs of others I am not so inclined to accept the sloppiness of others who want to leave smelly clothing strewn about or who make messes in the communal sink. 

In some ways we seem so ill equipped for getting along together. Generally we tolerate each other in only small doses. Yet the world is getting smaller and as it does solitude becomes a scarcer commodity while still remaining vital. Being alone reminds me that I have been alone for eons and I feel as though I am just now waking up to the idea of really being with others, really opening myself to the idea of fully sharing myself. Yet when I am alone and desirous of nobody's company i feel as though I am betraying others as though it is not possible to both loathe and love something without my wavering feelings in anyway diminishing its value. 

so are we all one or simply alone?