By Caroline Bodkin
Last weekend I was walking with a friend through my neighborhood and we approached a woman, likely in her late seventies, who walked with a hand shielding her hair and a half-smile. When we neared her, she slowed to speak to us.
“This wind,” she said, “Isn’t this always the way? I just got my hair done and here he is, undoing it!”
I smiled at her, and my more gregarious friend picked up the conversation, offering, “Oh, I know. It’s always that way! A suede jacket never fails to bring rain!”
The woman smiled, paused, considered us for a moment and said, “Okay, then. Thank you for listening.” Then, to herself, “Good. I’ve had a good conversation today,” and she let out a self-conscious laugh. My heart, at this point, nearly broke.
This woman was lonely. She’s lived a full, long life and yet arrived there on that day feeling lonely enough to crave and seek out conversation with strangers.
I believe people need people. When I was 19 I struggled with the question, “What does it mean to be alone?” I had just started dating this guy who I really liked and he really liked me, but I was feeling very lonely at the time, scared of getting involved, getting hurt, etc. So I decided I needed some time alone to figure things out.
I believe people need people, but I also think periods of solitude are necessary.
So over our week-long February break, I took a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, by myself with the sole purpose of being alone. If I was lonely, I wanted to be alone to confront that.
What happened? My first night at the High Street Hostel I found myself going for a beer with a group of girls who’d come over from Ireland for the weekend. The next day, I befriended one South African and one Brit and when we three went out that night, we ran into my school’s lacrosse team who’d come up for the night from London, where they were playing in a tournament. I had no idea they’d be there. One of my best friends played on the team and so he and I met the next morning for a walk and breakfast.
The world was telling me in no uncertain terms: You are not alone.
I did spend a lot of time by myself that week, after the lacrosse team left and once I got the hang of leaving the hostel unnoticed. But the truth is you can feel quite alone in a room full of familiar people, or totally connected even when you leave the country in search of isolation. That trip showed me that if you think you’re alone, you are assuming your connections with people are a one-way street, that there’s no one out there who’s missing you. And that’s just not possible.
Thinking of the woman on the street no longer makes me sad. I now think she’s come to terms with our inherent need for people and sees it as a given, like our need for air or food. Of course, people need people, and she was missing people, so she sought us out for a minute. This is not sad, it is beautiful and strong. Sad would be the day when we stop seeking each other out, and stop making ourselves available to those who seek us.
By the time I returned from my trip to Scotland, I’d concluded that people are never alone. We’re just not. Even those moments when you’re all by yourself, and you think, “If I were to have an accident, right here, right now, if I were to slip in the shower, it’d be days until anyone noticed. No one would know. I am alone…” You’re wrong. You probably have people thinking about you you’d never guess were doing so — old friends, family, the person who checked you out at the grocery store and remembered your smile, or one of the girls you stopped on the street last week to commiserate about the wind … they might all have you in mind.
Somebody out there cares, even if it’s someone you have yet to meet. (Caroline Bodkin lives in Los Angeles and wonders daily if she’ll miss her calling. You can )
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 22, 2004. Read the original PDF.