Alone or Free?

I was just going through these few lines from the book of Zahir by P Coelho

"How we strive for companionship.To be in touch. How strong the need is to feel wanted. I think that is one quality that separates us from the animal kingdom - to be wanted. To feel that you belong to some one. And yet somewhere why do we scream 'give me my freedom' . I wonder what do we want to free ourselves of. If being single today i have the freedom to do what i want , why am i still alone. Is it because I am just no longer wanted?"

“…., that there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we say about life, and that the world can go on without our awkward presence.

I began to imagine how many millions of people were, at that moment, feeling utterly useless and very unfortunate – however rich, charming and delightful they might be – because they were alone that night, as they were yesterday and as they might well be tomorrow. Students with no one to go out with, older people sitting in front of the TV as if it were their soul salvation, business men in their hotel rooms, wondering if what they were doing made any sense, women who spent the afternoons carefully applying their makeup and doing their hair in order to go to a bar only to pretend that they aren’t looking for company; all they want is confirmations that they’re still attractive; the men ogle them and chat them up, but the women reject them all disdainfully, because they feel inferior and are afraid that the men will find out they’re single mothers or lowly clerks with nothing to say about what’s going on in the world because they work from dawn to dusk to scrape a living and have no time to read the newspaper. People who look at themselves in the mirror and think themselves ugly, believing that being beautiful is what really matters, and spend their time reading magazines in which everyone is pretty, rich, and famous. Husbands and wives who wish they could talk over supper as they used to, but they are always other things demanding their attention, more important things, and the conversation can always wait for a tomorrow that never comes.

That day I had lunch with a friend who had just got divorced and she said to me: ‘now I can enjoy the freedom I’ve always dreamed of having.’ But that’s a lie. No one wants that kind of freedom: we all want commitment, we all want someone beside us to enjoy the beauties of everything, to discuss books, interviews, films, or even to share a sandwich with because there isn’t enough money to buy one each. Better to eat half a sandwich than a whole one. Better to be interrupted by the man who wants to get straight back home because there’s a big game on TV tonight or by the woman who stops outside a shop window and interrupts what we were saying about, far better that than to have the whole of everything to yourself with all the time and the quiet in the world to visit it.

Better to go hungry than be alone. Because when you are alone – and I’m talking here about an enforced solitude not of our choosing – its as if you were no longer a part of the human race.”