Being Alone

For the past few days I've been mulling over the wisdom of Louis CK on Conan O'Brien's show last week. To sum up this point, he believes that smartphones help people to never be alone, and thus suppress extreme emotions like sadness and happiness. It's an interesting take on the problem that most of us acknowledge, that of the attention that the smartphone demands. I can't count how many times I've been in a waiting room, a cafeteria, or just people-watching and see people in social situations with their face buried in their phones. Now, it's unfair to say that they just can't be bored for a moment as you can never tell exactly what they're doing. I often write on my phone's notepad, some people play games, some read books, and others text sixty people in the hopes that one will respond and give them someone to talk to.

I felt punched in the gut when Louis CK explained the feeling that he gets sometimes of feeling utterly alone and the immediate reaction of grabbing the phone to text, tweet, or facebook your feelings to the world. It really is a fear of being alone, a fear of being no one's judgments or expectations or relation, it's being that person that you are when you are completely alone.

Not an hour after starting to ponder these rather existential questions, I went to lunch and sat in my car afterwards, staring at the trees. I felt a pang of sadness, of loneliness, and I had a thought about the weather or something that I want to do next month. Immediately I reached for my phone....and stopped.

I don't find it that hard to be away from my phone. I often lose it in my room or forget it in my purse and while there's sometimes a moment of panic if I want the security that it offers or I realize I didn't have it when I thought I did, but I rarely go back for it. But I know the exact feeling of being cut-off from everyone, from feeling utterly alone.

I used to get that feeling when I would sign-off of instant messenger when I was in high school. It would be evening and I'd be chatting with someone (sometimes of little consequence, it was just a fun distraction), then have to log off in order to go finish homework or go to bed, and the second that I clicked the button to log off, even if I was going to continue to sit on the computer working on something, I would get this intense feeling of loneliness. I was alone in the room with a piece of machinery, unwillingly and uncomfortably alone with just me, a person that I often hated.

Since then, I've lost that feeling and now I revel in the time that I spend on my own and away from technology. Logging off means I get to be alone, not have to be alone.

I think Louis CK hit things on the head--it's fear, fear of being alone, fear of being just a person, no more and no less.