I find myself quite often having to defend myself for bouts of decisive solitude; and having to explain to people that, no, in my case it is not symptomatic of depression. One of the hardest things to express is that, in the case of my own particular disposition, the act of taking myself "off the map", as they say, is actually somehow a way to place myself in a context much larger than the social context. If I am an individual, reading things written in the past and thinking toward the future, then I am placing myself in the context of time: past and present. Whether anything I do will have any effect lasting beyond my death is beside the point. The actions itself are on this chronological plane, because my primary influences came prior to me on this plane. The context of time is significantly more vast than than the flat context of a social plane. In a strange sense, it is more social to stay home and read then to go out and drink in a bar. Additionally, the "conversation partners" found in books have arguably more to dispel, because they see things from a perspective that is necessarily very different from my own. Granted, there are many people from similar backgrounds, educations, income brackets, etc. who are very different (and of course people from different backgrounds and the like who are obviously very different), but when drawing from the past it is a given that they will be such; not a gamble. By "more to dispel", I only mean to say that they will more likely contain divergent opinions from one's own because they are created in such a different context, necessarily, due to the difference between eras. I don't mean to imply that individuals close at hand in the present have fewer interesting things to say than people in the past. It is simply that people in the past perhaps have things to say that one will less likely have heard before, or thought before, or even considered at all. I like the idea of exposing the self to opinions differing greatly from my own and from one-another, so that the choices one makes and the stances one makes can me most informed. Of course, this objective view is impossible to achieve in absolute entirety, because only certain texts were published in the first place, only certain texts survived the passage of time and the occasional book-burning or two, and of course because if the self is choosing what he reads, then he is still an agent that, to a degree, controls what he will learn, even if he is attempting wholeheartedly to be non-biased in his selection of texts.
I am much less easily swayed by a fear of being alone than I am by a fear of getting to some point in my life where I will be unable to be happy alone. By "alone", I don't mean "single"; nor do I really intend to say anything at all about how romance factors into the equation. Rather, I mean it as an expression of the state in which the individual is the sole motivator in his own life, and the self's most trusted and respected mentor. If the individual thinks of his own opinions regarding himself as being of the utmost importance (not out of egomaniacal attitudes or our of pride, but out of recognition of the fact that the self knows his own needs better than the other, which the exception of a few factors and cases), and if he chooses to surround himself with those who will allow him the maximum amount of growth towards being his best self, then a very positive state-of-affairs may manifest itself: one that is extremely encouraging to that individual, and in the way that is most appropriate to his or her own goals and aims. If the individual selects his or her peer group, conversation-partners, and confidantes based on who he feels will allow him to be his truest self and act according to his own most legitimate whims, then two things will happen: First, the other will encourage the individual's growth, and the individual, in turn, will more actively encourage his own growth. If the other also seeks large amounts of exposure to new ideas and also seeks mental and individual growth, then the same can happen in his case, in the same fashion. This sort of dynamic does not require that two people be at all alike. It requires only open-mindedness.
It seems to me that the greatest friend or colleague is the one who will be most understanding if his friend decides to go from being a doctor to being a circus-clown overnight: Not because he finds it amusing, but because he respect's the other person's ability to make his own decisions to that degree. So in this sense perhaps friends more different from an individual are most beneficial. If an individual has a friend who is very unlike that individual himself, then there will be no issues concerning feelings of abandonment if the individual no longer shares the same career, interests, or beliefs as the other.
All of this, of course, assumes that any given individual in question seeks to maximize his or her growth to whatever degree he or she pleases. Perhaps sometimes this is not the case, and if I am correct in positing this objection, then all of the above can be disregarded in said cases. Many people, it seems, are fully aware of what they want in life and aware of the way in which they want to grow, and yet very much afraid of actually reaching that point. Save for cases in which the individual has ill or malicious intent, this seems a mark of cowardice, and not contentment.
Although I write this while focusing primarily on an individual, I do not mean to say that I myself should be the sole beneficiary of such positive and encouraging relations between people. I mean just that every case of "I" (that is, every case of the self) should benefit from such. Everyone should be able to find inspiring company and in turn be inspiring to said company.
This, I think, is true of the social plane and the historical plane. It is simply easier at times to know that one will be able to act as he sees fit in response to said inspiration, without judgment, when the inspiration itself is inherently non-judgmental: e.g., inspiration found by way of reading a book.
The prospect of being surrounded by things that are all the same, in opinion, political stance, age, race, gender, world-view, cultural upbringing, religion, etc. absolutely terrifies me. I can't trust something if it is all I have ever known. And by this reasoning, can the individual really trust himself, if it is all he has ever known, and if it is what he has known best? What does it mean to trust the self? Does the self ever REALLY betray its own trust? I'm not sure. It seems a question that deserves further investigation and attention.
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