Do you really want to be alone?

I sometimes hear people say,” I just want to be alone. I wish people would just disappear and leave me alone.” Now I know they say that but I wonder if they have really thought that through

People need people whether they realize that or not. John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island*”, yet I wonder how many secretly wished that they could just find a deserted Island somewhere and ‘leave ‘ the world?

As a kid I loved the Robinson Caruso story, and so I was intrigued when I got a little older to hear that it was loosely based on a true story. I say loosely because I just read a brief account of the original Robinson Crusoe, and he was not shipwrecked. It seems that one Alexander Selkirk was a master on a ship under a Captain who it turn was under the overall Command of William Dampier. (The first Englishman to reach Australia.)

It seems that Selkirk and the Captain did not see eye to eye on anything to the point that Selkirk begged Dampier to leave him on the then deserted Island of Juan Fernandez, which Dampier did, and sailed on. Over the next 4 years Dampier’s fame and fortune waxed and waned and he found himself at the helm of a Privateer, which called in at Juan Fernandez some 4 years and 4 days after Selkirk was left on “His” island at his own request. He may have been happy at first but by then he was now only too happy to be back in the company of “his old commander and that bloodthirsty botanist, William Dampier”.

It seems at first the island was Selkirk’s ideal, but after 4 years, he was only to happy to get back into circulation, even if the initial long and unpleasant journey was going to be in the company of a hard and ruthless task master.

What about you? Don’t learn the hard way that no man is an island! Yes by all means temporary withdraw if you really must to catch your breath, so to speak, but remember isolation will not really help and that, "People really do need people". It is not just a catchy slogan but also a true fact of life.

So get out there and live your life among other people, and don’t withdraw completely. Believe it or not you need other people and they need you! Walter

I will leave you with John Donne’s quote: “No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main. (Meditation XVII)”