There is a lot of talk about lonely people, men and women, and much of that talk is negative, dismissive and critical. Of people like me. I won’t belabor those points because they’ve been belabored too much everywhere else. I feel they don’t accurately represent us solitary people.
Just like not all married people are happily married, not all single people are lonely and miserable. For many, throughout life the married state or the single state is a spectrum of existence. There may be times when married that you are happy. Then there may come times when you aren’t happily married. The same happens when you’re single. When you find your true purpose in life and true way of being it is then you can be in that state and remain happy for the rest of your life. For some, married or not, that path never comes.
Over the many years I have finally found the path for me and my proper state of being. I want to talk of the benefits of being alone. And that’s not loneliness. That’s solitude. They are not the same. For many of us it is a chosen way of life, for some it is involuntary but they make the best of it. People who have been single for many years are sometimes viewed as childish, viewed with suspicion (especially if they are men) or if they are women, viewed with pity or seen as too picky. These views fit with some but not all single people.
For some of us, we don’t really want marriage or a relationship. We really are happy being alone. I came to that over being in this state over the decades and finding as I saw the dissolution of marriages around me of couples I once thought had good marriages, living the so-called good life. I see so many things in society deteriorating when it comes to dating, courtship, marriage, family and juggling all of that with an increasingly cruel and hostile world, it occurred to me that my life, while not easy, is far simpler and less stressful than the lives of others who are married with children, and that I prefer to keep it that way.
Many cultures, including American culture, see prolonged singlehood as odd or strange, no matter whether you are a man or a woman. Each gender will experience the difficulties in their own unique way depending upon their personal experience, but single people are not taken as seriously in certain careers, or in life in general. Unfair, but this is how it is. We have to forge our own way and let people think what they will.
And especially if you have chosen to be single - when you prefer it - you are seen as really odd. In my case, when I was young I had always assumed I would find a husband and have children. But, it didn’t happen. There are very good reasons why one may choose not to have a family and may choose to be alone. I’m talking of those who have chosen to be single for either economic, personal or religious reasons and are also either celibate or if they choose to make sex part of their lives, are not out there looking for mindless sex. For them, or us, singlehood isn’t about fleeing attachments or responsibilities. It is a lifestyle choice that works best for us.
I would say it is like a personal, monk-like lifestyle when you stop moping about attachment. The wrong attachment is a misery for most anyway (I know this because of close and long observations of others who rushed to get married or attached to someone) so why not think about remaining alone? Many people assume that such people are missing out on life - in my experience they are usually talking about sex and alcohol and wild partying and all of that nonsense. There’s nothing missed there, in my opinion but alcoholism, venereal diseases and stupid regrets. More mature thinking folk wonder why I don’t want to experience the joys of having my own family. Nothing wrong with that question as I believe that was the original reason why Man was put on this earth by God. To this, I say that I once thought that was my purpose in life but now I see that since I haven’t ardently pursued marriage and family, now that I am in menopause and I am content with not having a husband and children, my life vocation was meant to be different.
Here are the benefits, in my opinion: I have found with my own life that remaining alone keeps distractions to a minimum, especially when you have many things to accomplish. When your mind is not clouded or poisoned with thoughts of trying to find someone, sex, and other distractions, your full physical and mental powers can be marshaled toward other things, things of the spirit, things of the mind. I think especially in this increasingly lawless and deteriorating world that this kind of control over your mind and body is imperative. The world would like nothing better for people to constantly be distracted and mindlessly consuming garbage, always under its control. That’s what social media, AI and algorithms are for. There is nothing worse to a fallen and corrupted society than someone who is enlightened, aglow with the spirit of God, focused and full of self-control. Better to be a threat than a thrall. A single or a married person who is full of clarity of mind and spirit is a threat to such an ailing world. Such a person cannot be easily controlled or deceived. But it is easier for a single person to get achieve this state of being.
Also, because of my personality type I have found as I get older and understand myself better that I need more solitude than the average person, even more than other introverts. This is a struggle in an extroverted culture such as America but it’s possible to carve out the time when enough effort is made. Sometimes that means rearranging your life onto a path that most people won’t or can’t walk.
The ideas of celibacy, solitude, loneliness and monasticism is one that has been on my mind for many years. Their are different facets of knowing how to be alone. For a knight of the Temple of Solomon it was necessary to remain holy. Apart from women, consecrated to God and constantly in prayer and contemplation on holy things. Even more than knights, monks, and hermits and nuns were also called to live this way. These have done so for holy reasons. Then there are philosophers such as Henry David-Thoreau and Sir Isaac Newton, who set themselves apart for higher order thinking to feed the intellect, to ponder how the earth and the universe is made, how nature really works.
The apostle Paul recommends it for those who can keep to it. Not having the “tribulation in the flesh” that marriage brings, one can be more fully devoted to God’s work and purpose. If a person is not religious, then one can be more fully focused on their own work and purpose. Not all life should be lived from the gut, the baser instincts and personal monasticism can lift a man or woman out of that gutteral thinking and way of being. Now, being alone, by itself won’t do it. In fact, there is a danger when one is alone without purpose, just as there is a danger in simply drifting along with others with no purpose. If alone with nothing around you to uplift your thinking it can turn to madness; narcissistic, unhealthy thinking. Proverbs 18:1 warns us of too much isolation. But a healthy mind seeking alone time or even singlehood will benefit greatly when guardrails are in place. Meaning, every now and then you have time to associate with others of good nature and character. In fact, when one is alone and choosing to be alone I have found (and others have too) that the mind becomes clear, sharp and able to function like nothing before. Preoccupations with sex and other issues aren’t there to cloud judgment or divert attention from purpose. You become like a light, shining in this dark world.
I have found in my own life that when I am alone and I am filled with purpose, spiritual or secular, I prefer that state. I have no real desire to be with anyone. It would distract me and divert my attention from whatever I’m trying to accomplish. This is especially true when I am writing. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that my mind stays clear and free from the various tribulations that marriage and children can bring. I’ve never been married and now that I am entering what some would call the crone years, I’m happy I never did. I don’t have the baggage many others my age have and I often feel that I am channeling virgin goddess energy, mostly of Hestia, but something of Artemis and Athena too. My creative, mental and physical power is my own and not given to someone else. I am not being directed, controlled or interfered with by someone else’s will when it comes to what I wish to do. My will is my own and I can do what I want, when I want and how I want. This is equally true for men as well. This is a powerful state for both men and women but first we must shut out the noise that tells us that we are strange and dangerous or abnormal because of choosing to remain single. We must choose to make peace with and stand proudly in this state. To come into one’s own power, one must choose a thing, not be forced or led along or feel trapped by it.
I bring this up because not only has this informed my own life but the main character in the current series I’m writing is single and he is destined to remain that way for the rest of his life. Since he is a young man of twenty-six, introverted and intuitive with no sophistication with women, this will be a powerful struggle at times; the lure to be with a woman and the struggle to reject fleeting, meaningless encounters. It would not be realistic if he didn’t go through this struggle. Jonas was a knight of the Order of the Northern Star - an order that I have patterned after the Templar Knights - and he is now living alone as a private investigator but has kept mostly to his monk-like lifestyle and he struggles to remain that way. I wrote him this way because I was not interested in the complications that romance and sex bring nor was I interested in simply taking it onto the story just to spice things up. Quite frankly, I think sex is over used in most American entertainment these days. It’s there to fill time, titillate or inflame and fire up an otherwise boring story. This character will have mostly an emotional and spiritual arc; dealing with ideas and states of being that have little to do with the id - the gut. That doesn’t mean those primal urges are not there and that he won’t have to wrestle with them. He will. There is a complication I have injected into this with the character Cassie, an attractive young woman and investigative sidekick. Temptation always lurks.
Jonas gets his clarity and his life back in order not in the depressive, lonely state he starts in, simmering in anger, resentment and sadness over his past but in finding his true path and purpose in life, peeling away the resentment and moving toward it without allowing distractions to pull him down and drain him of his power or throw him off to a different branch of life.
In a world that is becoming darker and more sinister around him, he retains his power and the ability to act with clarity and purpose, to shine a light in the darkness. That bright light in the darkness enables him to become a small oasis of hope to others who are suffering - in a way, he is like a knight in shining armor.
So, I raise a toast, a glass of kombucha, or basil cucumber water ( I don’t drink much these days) to the single people of the world, especially those who are content and happy to be such and to those who have made peace with it and are trying to find their way. You are mighty. You are alone. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that.
Happy reading.
Message At The Deep is the first book in the Jonas Johnson science fiction noir series. Pick up a copy today on major retail platforms or my shop!
