On the weekend I was catching the train back home after a pleasant afternoon at the movies.
Well, pleasant apart from the middle-class mums whooping with delight as their children threw popcorn all over the lobby and stamped in it, as if participating in some bizarre modern art experiment.
But, I digress.
As the train rolled and rocked back toward the city, with beautiful shades of sunset illuminating the countryside, I started to feel incredibly lonely. I had nobody to share this moment with.
I texted a friend when I got home, who himself has been going through some tough times, and he wrote back:
“Loneliness can also be empowering – teaching you the things you appreciate about yourself and the things you have to offer someone else.”
I let this sink in over the last couple of days to decide whether I believed it or not.
I certainly don’t feel empowered about loneliness. Loneliness, to me, conjures up images of sitting in the dark in a one-bedroom apartment eating baked beans out of a tin.
So let’s break it down. What do we appreciate about ourselves? Well, I suppose firstly that I can appreciate the simple things in life. I still find train journeys exciting. I like watching the world go by. I might feel less excited if I were on the Docklands Light Railway in London, but even then the views are so depressing that you can still appreciate them – they’re like a scene from the nuclear holocaust drama “Threads”.
What do I have to offer someone else? People often use the word “nice” to describe me.
Arnott’s make a biscuit called “Nice”. Apparently it’s supposed to be pronounced “neece”, as in this coconut-flavoured delight is named after the city in France. But let’s forget that for a second, because it ruins my bullshit argument.
If you were offered a Nice biscuit, you’d have one. They taste good, and you’ve been primed to like it because the word “nice” is baked into it. But you wouldn’t eat a whole packet. You’d undoubtedly move onto a Tim Tam. Those are the kind of biscuits you consume by the packetload, and rush off to the supermarket at midnight to buy more of.
I once was arranging a meeting with the editor of a gay magazine in the UK, an ex-pat Australian, and he asked me to bring Tim Tams with me from New Zealand. They’re a desirable commodity.
Nice isn’t.
What does nice mean? The ever reliable Dictionary.com gives us several adjectives: pleasing, agreeable, delightful, amiably pleasant, kind.
That sounds like a lightweight British comedy starring Maggie Smith. The sort of film where the comic climax involves someone spilling a glass of wine over lunch when a character inadvertently makes a faux pas with a light sexual double entendre.
We’re all familiar with the aphorism “nice guys finish last”. There is great debate over the truth of it, depending on whether your view of the world involves a glass half-empty or one that’s half-full.
Maybe the problem is that the glass is both half-full and half-empty. That’s complicated. It means there isn’t an easy answer.
What do we appreciate about ourselves, and what do we have to offer others? I don’t know if I’m capable of formulating those thoughts, like a spec list for a new iMac, much less when I’m in the throes of loneliness.
I’m sure the answer will come to me if I keep staring out the window. I just passed a building in Prahran with “FUCK GLUTEN” tattooed on it. I want to find the person who wrote it and beat them to death with a bread stick.
The view really is quite lovely.
There is a big difference between loneliness and solitude, though from the outside they can look pretty much the same. Sometimes it can be nice to not have the pressure of having to fit in with someone else, and to have the freedom to do what you want, when you want, how you want, or even to do nothing but reflect if that’s what you want to do.
Loneliness isn’t pleasant, but if it’s an empty cup to be filled, at least it’s telling you that there’s a cup.
And as for being “nice”? I’m sure that it’s much more exciting to live your life as a complete shit, but I’m reasonably confident that nice will leave you much better off in the long term.
Once again a lovely piece of work, Chris! And so thought provoking. The thoughts I have to share were triggered by both your astoundingly profound writing and the response immediately beneath it (when I wrote this, which if course may have changed by the time I actually POST it) from Jack Hope – who mentioned that he has lots of experience of loneliness and not much of relationships. Let’s not forget that some of the loneliest people in the world are IN relationships. Or they have the types of friends that leave them feeling even more lonely than ever. The glass half full / half empty dichotomy is so true and so frustratingly wonderful when it’s thrown at us by well-meaning friends! And as Pollyanna as I may seem in writing this – I totally believe that being or feeling lonely, as your friends says and as you appear to agree, is a unique opportunity to do a bit of internal naval-gazing – and do the (love her of hate her) Oprah-thing of finding the things there are in your life to be grateful for… And I’ll be right behind you beating up the graffiti artist with some gluten free bread rolls!
Thanks again for sharing such deeply personal wisdom!
I’m letting out my inner rainbow here but this line from Stephen Sondheim’s musical ‘Into the Woods’ encapsulates my view of nice: “You’re so nice – you’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice. I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just right. But I’m the witch and you’re the world.”
Nice is a generic, bland, inoffensive way of going through the world. It’s often conflated with polite and pleasant, two qualities a person can have without being inauthentic and/or unprincipled.
It’s also a word used a lot by people to provide a superficial description of someone that sounds positive and requires little actual thought.
I have a lot of experience of loneliness and not a lot with relationships. I know nothing about either one. But I do know about nice and I do think that as the word is used today that it is an undesirable quality. Maybe that’s why I have lots of experience with loneliness.
Of the following words: good, bad, witch, or nice, I can only say that the one I would least like used to describe me would be ‘nice.’
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‘What have you got to offer other people. What are your good points?’ A psychologist once asked me this question. My reply? “Well, nothing really.” he set me a task. I had 2 weeks to ask all my family, (children, siblings, ex husband) and my friends, what they liked about me. It was bloody hard to do, but I got back a list of lovely words like honest, caring, wise, thoughtful, generous etc. I didn’t believe a word of it so I made a list of my bad points. Bitchy, mean, selfish etc. When the Psych read them he said, ” that’s right, you are all of those things. Good and bad. Learn to love and accept them all.” It took a long time, and a lot more therapy, lol, but when i finally learned I also found i wasn’t as lonely anymore. my confidence grew, I gained more friends and i finally found that be alone didn’t have to mean being lonely. I’d learned to live with myself. And i think I’m both a Tim Tam and a Nice.
The last 14 months I have been trying to deal with being alone. After spending 5 1/2 years sharing my life with someone, then being alone it can be a real struggle. I have grown to love being alone, as I get to decide what happens to me next, there’s no awkward decision making conversations or arguments and having to settle for something the other really wants to do but you don’t really care for. It took me a good couple of months to get to this point though, and I’m sure you’ll get there too.
middle-class mums whooping with delight as their children threw popcorn all over the lobby and stamped in it, as if participating in some bizarre modern art experiment – LOL. Hilarious
A long time ago “nice” once meant foolish. Ah, the evolution of language.
Also, I remember someone telling me very clearly that “nice” is something someone does, it isn’t who someone is….I would aim to be a TimTam…..
Lol best advice of the day: aim to be a TimTam
When I get clinically lonely, I remind myself I made the choices to get to that place. Also, I’ve noticed that “wanting” is directly tied to loneliness. Wanting can be a learned response, a structural part of us like hair color and skin tone. We have this empty cup inside that has to be filled—sometimes with love or sex, sometimes with money or food, or a billion other things. Best to address the cup and root it out instead of focusing on what we try to put inside.
Is desiring companionship a pathology that has to be rooted out?
Oh, God, I hope not! I just don’t want to be miserable while I pine.