I read an interesting thought the other day. The writer suggested that if you like yourself you should never be lonely. What the writer was intimating is that as long as you like yourself, you should like the company you keep even if the only company you have is yourself.
That is a wonderful idea, but I wonder if it is a realistic idea? I think some basic things are missing from our own company that make the writer’s thought a good one, on the practical side it just does not work. No matter how much we like or love ourself, unless we are narcissistic our own company is found lacking.
First and foremost is the idea of us. No matter how well we like and love ourselves, unless we are clones of Narcissus from Greek mythology we do not enjoy our own company to the exclusion of all others, We are social animals, and we need to communicate with others like ourselves, or lacking that with animals we keep as pets. For most of us it is a boring conversation where everyone who hears what we are saying agrees with what we say. Such is the case in a conversation with ourselves; objective opinion is missing.
Knowing ourselves better than anyone else on this earth, we are keenly aware of our shortfalls. Whether they are physical or in the matter of keeping our own company, in our mind, if we have a healthy perspective on us, there is a lot about ourselves that we simply do not like, and keep away from others knowledge.
Because we are inquisitive we search and hunger for new ideas and new ways of thinking. In some ways we are like a snake shedding its skin. We are constantly trying out new ways of thinking, new ways of managing our world, and new ways of seeing ourselves. If we only have our own company, new ideas and new thoughts slow way down.
Outside of ourselves is our genetics. Our drive from our genes is to get out in the world and make as many copies of ourselves as we possibly can. There are slight differences between men and women in the numbers of us we want to create, but we all share a genetic drive to pass on our genes to future generations.
Remembering the movie, Cast Away with Tom Hanks, and the conversation that revolved around it and also brought out in the movie, is we need social interaction with other people to remain sane. Perhaps this was made even more obvious in an old sci-fi movie, Enemy Mine where a human and his alien enemy find themselves together on a hostile world with no hope of rescue.
As much as we like to think we are independent and want for nothing from the world, I am of the opinion that we can no more live with ourselves for any extended period of time any more than we can become perfect beings in a single lifetime. We are too incomplete, and we need interaction, even to the extent that we will seek negative interaction or attention if that is the only interaction or attention available to us.
With that being said, and reaffirming I am not Narcissus, my phone has rang three times in the last hour and I have not bothered to answer it. The calls were tele-marketers wanting me to buy something I do not need. Now if an alien were to call I might be tempted to answer. On a side note, I thought the title of this post is a streak of thoughtful creativity, or so say’s my own Narcissus.
