It’s more than what you think

By Olamide Onile-ere. Olamide, 17, is from Abuja, Nigeria. Please read her entry and leave your comments below.

‘lonely and alone’. Depending on the circumstances, these words are sometimes used as synonyms for each other and often we mix up their actual meanings because we view them from a shallow perspective but I guess Jean Paul Sartre, understood that,when he wrote,’if you are lonely when you are alone,you are in bad company.’ Sometimes we choose to be alone for various reasons, while at other times we just find ourselves being alone doing one thing or another. Maybe taking a short walk down the road to cool off our heads from the days activities, taking a bath or a nap, studying, going to the mall to shop by ourselves instead of with friends and thousands of other reasons. The point is, we can’t always choose to be without a companion and even if we do, there’s no crime in it but being lonely while we’re by ourselves is the real problem.

They say, everything we do happens twice. First of all, mentally, in our minds and secondly, the actual occurrence. This is true, take for example, everyday of our lives when we walk into the kitchen, we do a mental survey of what to eat or cook, what method to use in cooking it,t he duration for the whole dish and the end result, the taste, look e.t.c. This then automatically puts us to work but lets not overlook the fact that we acted upon that because we decided to do so. The same thing goes with every other activity we do in our lives but peradventure, someone comes with a suggestion contrary to ours, thereby interfering with what we’ve created in our minds and presented in our brains, there is the tendency that we may decide to take their ideas. This therefore has given them an edge over us, into influencing our actions and thoughts, even if it’s just a little.

The reverse of the above illustration is what happens when we are lonely while being alone. Expatiatory, when we are in the said condition, after little or no deliberation, we tend to take whatever thoughts, ideas or notions that comes into our minds and because there’s no interference of a third party, we act upon them, be it good or bad. This is most likely to be a negative action ,because at that point in time, we were having a feeling of unhappiness and depression, where we were not in our most suitable state of mind. Checking out most past records of suicides, one thing was common, isolation. Being alone in addition to the negative feeling they were having,rendered the victims vulnerable to themselves, to their own thoughts and in worst cases, some had self inflicted injuries before the actual suicide. Aside from making us vulnerable, our healths can also be affected in various ways,it can evade our charisma and get us into other wrong motives.

It’s possible to find ourselves being lonely even amidst a throng.It could be because we’re not of like minds to them, we’re not being accepted into the gathering and multitude of other reasons.Its absolutely normal to have various kinds of thoughts going though our minds at that time but for the fact that were in the midst of people,we will try to do all we can to suppress those negative feelings because of our self consciousness,of what people might say or think of us,if we take a wrong action but it is a known fact,that not everyone is self conscious and in this case,not everyone can try to be.People like that do not care of other peoples opinion towards them and so would want to do whatever they think is right,at that moment, just to void themselves of that sad feeling but since their not in solitude, people with humane feelings would

definitely interfere with their actions, thereby stopping them from doing it.Obviously, it’s so sad that the same cannot be said of a solitary who is lonely.

Our brains and minds can do undescribable things that we lest imagine,good and bad.Making reference to what Jean Paul Sartre said about bad company, when we’re lonely and at the same time alone,I would,he was referring to the brain and mind,working together as one entity, which have strong influence on us.Its as if,they tend to work faster than their normal rate,negatively, when we’ve not occupied them with something we would want to on our own will.

The analogy of being lonely when we’re alone is one that needs to be analyzed with deeper understanding and consideration,therefore reading a book,watching TV, talking over the phone,writing,occupying ourselves with house chores,playing games,sleeping and any other positive,recreational activity,is advisable to do whenever we find ourselves in that condition,in order to dissipate the lonesome feeling,cause we never can know what danger might be lurking around us.

13 comments on “It’s more than what you think

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our newsletter!