In Search of Connected Authenticity

Starting something new is difficult, I think getting passionate, sitting down, then not knowing what to do next is almost a fundamental human experience. Starting something new, with an audience? Now, that's hard mode. When you're by yourself, you can start, stop, stumble, fail, restart, over and over, and nobody will notice, but making this public means some pressure on me to get this 'right'.

Instead, I'm not going to even concern myself with getting this 'right' or not, I have the text box open and I will just start writing. Then whatever comes out is the base for what you're reading now. 

So with this freedom, I want to dedicate this first entry onto this new blog to something I caught myself thinking about, coming back from a family dinner on the Liverpool to Manchester train...

I read Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Reveries of the Solitary Walker, glancing up to watch the passing English countryside, cast against the warm glow of an early spring sunset. The 'Walks' that form the bulk of the book are unfinished essays that Rousseau wrote towards the end of his life, before his death in 1778. He discusses his suffering at the hands of his attackers; targeted for his writings. Now he announces that he is leaving them all behind.

I would have loved my fellow-men in spite of themselves. It was only by ceasing to be human that they could forfeit my affection. So now they are strangers and foreigners to me; they no longer exist for me, since such is their will.

First Walk, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau Read (p.147)

Note that Rousseau does not hate people or society, but he makes it clear that he must live outside of men. Placing himself into isolation was the only way he felt that he could guarantee his freedom to think without concern for humanly judgement. What drove him here were years of debate, argument, and fighting, which clearly had an effect on Rousseau. I know how he felt, having spent the last decade in an increasingly solitary life myself; as well as dealing with all the turbulent emotions that drove me and kept me there... Now that I am nearing 30, I have decided this isolated life, which has given me thought-freedom, is also making me miserable.

This wasn't something new for me to think about, the continued withdrawal has only partly been by choice. Despite my best efforts to know people, there appeared to be some distance between us, which I was not privied to understanding. I have tried over years, decades, to remove loneliness but despite meeting and knowing people, that loneliness remained. That loneliness which drew itself from the invisible distance, which I had no possibility of ever seeing. So I attempted, re-attempted, and attempted again, to cross that colourless desert, then only to breakdown in frustration. Despite travelling for many days, I had seemingly made no progress.

So now, what can I do? For those years, especially since 2020 when I got a full-time job, I have lost the time, energy, and opportunities I used to have to socialise and explore. I no longer have daily classes, I mostly work from home, and I never have to talk to anyone face-to-face unless I need to. All that I was left with was myself, the Internet, and a lot of time to think about my experiences with people, loneliness, and the ephemeral distance.

One of the differences between myself and Rousseau are the drivers for our isolation. For him, it was the 18th century French society he found himself in, who were responding to what he said as an adult. Whereas for me, the driving forces were systemic with the realities of growing older and moving on from university in my society. Despite our differences, we both have a lived experience resulting from the values and systems of our societies, and the guiding ideas that maintain it. This is what a thought-free environment can make easier to challenge and understand. Away from others, we're free to form our own ideas with their values, which direct and fill our existences with a transcendent meaning.

The nondescript walls of fog that surround me are slowly marked by my meditation, etching onto their surfaces swirls and patterns, annotated with symbols. Together they begin to form characters, places, events, and then ideas. I explored areas of my experience, trying to understand and find some way forward despite itself, and slowly the fog itself becomes irrelevant. It has become just another tool for me to escape this place. As the fog fell, a way forward has revealed itself. 

I believe this will be how I will transcend the colourless desert, so far I already feel myself understanding the unknowable rules. Perhaps, hopefully, at the end of this path will be the termination of loneliness. Now that I am armed with a path, it is my responsibility to walk it and protect the ideas which keep it illuminated. No path is straight, and some ideas will need to be challenged to ensure the path leads me toward my true future. If I don't interrogate these ideas which lead me forward, I could easily fall into the inauthenticity I tried to escape in the first place by acting unethically.

That's when the train pulled into the small station surrounded by a suburban neighbourhood on one side, and warehouses on the other,"Patricroft," the automated voice. It wouldn't be long now before I arrive at Manchester for my connecting train up to Bolton. By now, I've slipped my headphones on and started idly listening to some YouTube, "I just want to get home and into some pyjamas."