Alone or Lonely?

It may all sound the same to a tortured soul trapped between the chasms of boredom and solitude...but loneliness isn't the same as being alone. While the first is imposed upon you by situations, you get to choose the other. While a lonely person is prone to desperation, a mind that chooses to be alone is in for an intellectual treat at times, for a conversation with self can be more intriguing than dialogs held with geniuses!

But isn't solitude a euphemism chosen by those who can't really take the pressures of being social? And isn't gregariousness a desperate effort on part of those who can't take the chance of being left alone with themselves?

As much as the ambiguity enthralls me, not reaching a final stance on how my opinion should be about the topic is not really what I appreciate in myself! So dropping the cynicism and choosing a rosy view of it all would be the way to go...

NO! Solitude is no euphemism...only a mind sure enough to sustain facing itself can choose to stay alone rather than in company of many distractions. For what an empty mind is capable of is too obvious to all of us who have been bored at some point in time. Its not about how one feels about things, its about how one IS! My choice of being alone can be dictated by my need to be with myself, have some "Me time" and pamper myself with all my narcissism. But for some, it could be because the going gets too tough and halting and recuperating in the rat race becomes an essential survival technique!

And NO! Gregariousness never has any tones of desperation in it! For it requires so much positive energy that anything petty has to get dissolved in the process. Approaching another person, establishing a rapport and then multiplying what you just did with one to a million. This is nothing but pure art! And it emerges out of sheer will to know the world, to indulge one's curiosity and to use every skill one may possess to win over someone. Even if its an attempt to escape solitude, what is the harm in that? After all, we all can't be Rhett Butlers, with our amused opinions of the world, who can relish the intensity of thoughts that being alone with self brings. Some of us are poor Scarlett O'Hara as well, who valiantly fight against one's own selfish nature to put up a show of gregariousness, to get others to like her.

Now in what light one sees being "lonely or alone", is purely dependent on one's own perspective about being strong or being weak!