Enjoying Your Own Company

(Photo: Outside my B&B in Derby)

I finally unearthed my travel journal last night and had to read over what I'd written while I was in England. One theme kept coming up - the fact that I enjoyed my own company, that I wasn't afraid to be by myself, that I could go to a cafe and eat and be perfectly comfortable.

I've always been one of those people who enjoys being by myself. Not all the time, of course, because if I'm by myself too much I get depressed...but I don't mind doing a lot of activities by alone. I've gone to movies alone, the symphony, the theater, the mall. Doesn't bother me a bit.

But being a solo traveler in a foreign country is a bit different. For one, you have the opportunity to meet people that you otherwise wouldn't. When I was in Witney, a small town 7 miles from Oxford, I went to a small cafe for lunch. An older lady sat beside me, also by herself. And a few minutes after I arrived, we struck up a conversation. Her name was Ruth, she was 72 years old, and had been cycling since the age of 2. She told me stories of how she and her boyfriend have cycled over Ireland and Italy and Portugal. She was intrigued by the fact that I was a writer, and by the stack of books she'd just bought, I could tell why!

But something she said really struck me and it was at that moment that I knew I'd found a kindred spirit. She said she lived alone, but wasn't lonely. She plays her flute, loves to garden, and loves to read. But she also needs to be around people sometimes. Otherwise, she gets depressed. I feel the exact same way.

I can go for a few days without leaving the house. I'm perfectly content with my own company. But then I start feeling isolated and out-of-touch, no matter if I have the Internet or not. I need to talk to people face to face, to interact with them and share the common experience of being human.

Ruth and I also discussed how modernization, especially in this day and age, has taken some of that human experience to a new and sometimes troubling level. In my journal, I wrote:

Ruth was right about modernization - something has been lost in our world. The art of conversation with strangers...it's like we go out of our way not to speak to each other. People have their iPods, their laptops, their cell phones. And it's everywhere. Buses. Trains. In cafes. On the street. Why do we want to isolate ourselves from each other (in public)? On the other hand, we are very eager to interact on the internet, almost to the extreme. It's definitely sad. But I am glad there are some of us who don't cater to this ideal.

I sense a bit of a trend in myself here. I've given up t.v., and subscribe more to the ideals of the 1940s than 2008. I don't own an iPod. I don't have a cell phone that connects to the Internet or sends email. My phone is pretty darn basic - I don't really mess with all the gadgets. And more and more, I'm making it a point to smile more, to say "please" and "thank you" and to generally be a more happy and content person. In essence, I don't want to "isolate" myself in public. There's a big difference between being alone in public, and isolating yourself. Is that being old-fashioned?

What do you think? In this modern day and age, are we drifting further apart from each other as human beings in everyday life or have we created a new, virtual world that is somehow more real to us than walking through our neighborhood or shopping at a store?

(And don't forget - today is Veteran's Day! For my tribute to all the veterans, past and present, please visit my World War II blog).