[10] You Are (Not) Alone.

An Op-Ed about preparing for the future, self-induced isolation, my love of people, and the notion of "original thoughts."

It often feels like there’s no manual to life. And so you spend a large portion of your life constantly rationalizing about HOW you should live your life. Rather, how you should approach a specific component in your life — a specific duty, an important event, or a stressful relationship. The more experiences you have, the more people you meet, the more media you consume, and the more emotions you feel, it all gives your life THAT much more nuance. And so, you’re compelled to feel that there’s that SO MUCH more thought that’s needed for you to properly navigate your life. 

At least, that’s how I go about my life. So much time spent reflecting on the past and preparing for the future. And though you COULD argue that my attempts to understand how I fit into my life are productive in the long term, it’s ultimately a miserable process. I feel so lonely during these periods of introspection. I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts (kind of like the echochamber I talk about in [7]) — so much so that, at a certain point, I feel emotionally and spatially separated from people. You know, that feeling of being alone even though you’re surrounded by others.

Most times, the catalyst for getting stuck in my own thoughts is the judgment from others. Being ridiculed. Being belittled. Being discarded. I thought that if one person was capable of finding flaws in me, then everyone is not only capable BUT CONSTANTLY finding flaws in me. I started to feel that everyone else was better than me. In fact, I felt that people were devoid of flaws, yet I had SO many of them. I felt that I needed to fix all these flaws — and ONLY THEN would I be able to integrate myself back into social circles. 

So I fell into this cycle of demonizing and fearing others because I ASSUMED they were judging me. To make matters worse, I started internalizing and affirming their judgment — because ONLY a person who’s as miserable as me is unable to swiftly fix their flaws. I mean, it felt like I was doing something wrong — that my efforts to “fix” myself were fruitless, or that I was investing so much time into something that wouldn’t really address my flaws. And even when I felt that I no longer applied to certain flaws, another trait would quickly take its place.  

I mean this notion goes beyond my relationship with external praise in [4] and [5]. External judgment (rather, the fear of it) pushed me to isolate myself from others. Using the same, faulty “if I can’t see them, they can’t see me” logic that a child would use when closing their eyes instead of hiding behind a tree in a game of seek, I thought that if I isolated myself from others, they wouldn’t be able to judge me. I didn’t want to be ridiculed, and so I chose to hide myself. I thought that, if I concealed myself, I could prevent others from having any intel to base their judgment on. And so, I stopped talking as much. I stopped going out as much. I stopped being myself. 

Looking back, I think that my thought process was built more on intuition and not rationality. The only thing that isolation did was spare me from hearing others talk about me, but it didn’t do anything to stop them from saying the same things they were already saying. And, if anything, the self-induced isolation probably just invited more judgment — you know, in the vein of being a “social outcast” or whatever. 

More poignant is I hadn’t anticipated that isolating myself — abstaining from group photos because I felt so immensely unphotogenic or refusing to say hi to people I’m not particularly close with on the path to class because one person forgot my name back in freshman fall — only made it so much rarer for me to actually experience anything remotely positive. It prevented me from cultivating and capturing experiences with people, both on a surface level and on a basis of emotional vulnerability. I mean, looking back (again), it’s not like I was being judged all the time — I had let a figment of my delusion (that people were always judging me) manifest into a supposed dogma that then dictated how I went about my life. 

It’s this realization (that self-induced isolation is both unnecessary and destructive) that manifested into a desire to seek people out. I mean, you could see figments of that mentality throughout this past year — getting lunch with people I wouldn’t usually go out with at Choate over summer break, forcing myself to meet new people (both students and teachers) in my fifth-form classes, reigniting a dormant relationship during this cross country season, or unlocking a special bond after a trip to Thailand. And man, people have been so good to me. I wouldn’t be as insightful, as thoughtful, as caring, as enjoyable, as driven, or as social if it weren’t for them. 

But then again, this new approach to life is not without its flaws. Sometimes, I catch myself straddling the line between genuinely enjoying the company of someone and simply not wanting to be alone. Where it’s less of an “ I am enjoying myself right now” and more of a “will I enjoy telling people about this unique experience I shared with this person.” I think that’s a symptom of this everlasting desire to chase some social relationship, whether that be a limerent romance or a supposed “friend crush” (shoutout Ethan).

It’s my desire to build valuable relationships with people that I fail to realize that I can’t have that dynamic with everyone. I’m reluctant to call them “good experiences” because they ended in me losing people that I had invested so much time and effort into. And yet, the falling-outs I had with people and the affinities that never happened were crucial in making me realize that not everyone will like me — and they might not always have a good reason for why they won’t. But what’s certain is that they won’t like me no matter what. I can fix any flaw that they judge me on, but then they’ll just choose to find another flaw. Some people just aren’t meant to be. 

And I just need to learn to be okay with that — I say this as if it’s a hard pill to swallow (sometimes, it is), but it’s more of a reminder that I need to be grateful for the bonds that DID work out. So much circumstance, luck, and destiny went into these relationships. Not everyone has the privilege of being in such relationships, yet I have quite a few of them. In other words, I’m reminded to value the people who genuinely enjoy my company and my presence in their lives. No one has the responsibility to meet my needs, and yet my needs are met. That’s an immense privilege. 

Still, learning to realize who cares about you (and who doesn’t) is a life skill that took me a while to figure out for myself. There were times when I felt that I was putting in a disproportionally large amount of effort and time into a relationship. There were times when I felt that my trust was betrayed by those I had confided in. There were times when I felt trapped in a friend group, unable to branch out to meet other people. There were times when I was unsure if the people I cared about felt the same way about me because the way they showed affection was different from the way I chose to show it — you know, some people explicitly state their love, others hide it under a layer of sarcasm, and most people are too afraid to be that vulnerable. And so it’s just been a process of trial and error. 

I think an extension of loving people so much is that I don’t really have the self-respect to end a relationship. I mean, sure, I’ll let a relationship fizzle down, but I’m so against the idea of a big confrontation. What will it take for me to end a relationship? I’m USUALLY an optimistic guy, and so I think I can make all of my social endeavors WORK. Hell, I have a friend who left for Switzerland when I left for the States, and we’re still in contact (what’s up, Misha?). 

But the reality is that most of these social relationships just aren’t meant to last. That friend group in freshman year that I was so confident would last us our entire time at Choate barely made it through half of sophomore year. Sometimes these things are within my control (e.g., carelessness, forgetfulness, tardiness, selfishness), but most times, they’re not (e.g., circumstance, geographic difference, branching out, incompatibility). I hate how it feels when someone who I had invested so much in no longer wants to invest in me anymore. And so I think that’s a reason why I can’t just stop investing in someone — but that’s NOT a good thing, you know? 

My dad tells me that it’s important to keep relationships in limbo. To be able to pick them right up where you left them after leaving them on hiatus after you graduate or switch industries or marry. But that’s kind of a corporate and opportunist way of looking at relationships — something that I’m not sure I’m ready to employ onto the bonds that I’ve built with my friends. I don’t want my friends to feel that I’m friends with them out of this sense of transactionality. I’m friends with the people I’m friends with because I enjoy THEIR company, and all I can hope for is that they enjoy mine. 

I want to touch on this notion that floats around: that you’ll never have an original thought. That the revelations and the experiences that you thought were unique to your life were uttered in the scriptures of philosophers centuries ago. Whether or not that’s necessarily true, the mere thought of being just another repetition in human history might come as a disappointment to you. And yet, for me, it brings me this semblance of hope. 

It’s only by embracing that I will rarely (if not, never) have original thoughts that help me look back at these lonely periods of reflecting on the past and tirelessly preparing for the near future so much less painful. Because, no matter how miserable I felt while introspecting, the people who came to the same conclusions as I did MUST have gone through the same loneliness and self-disgust that I did. You know, not JUST the famous philosophers, like Aristotle warning that isolation leads to unhappiness or Neitzsche criticizing a tendency to conform to external expectations, BUT the “mundane” people of yesteryear. Moreover, it’s knowing that someone in the future is bound to go through the same things that I did. My struggles have BEEN struggled, and my struggles will CONTINUE TO BE struggled — not necessarily the EXACT same experiences, but identical in essence. I don’t know, embracing this “philosophical camaraderie” has helped me focus on today instead of deliberating over yesterday or tomorrow. 

And I’m sure that detaching myself from this habit of ALWAYS thinking about how I can be “better” is what’s allowed me to really be in the moment with other people. To be aware of the people that I have in my life right now, and really show them that gratitude and love that they deserve.