One of my all-time favourite games is stardew valley. I don’t actually play a lot of games, partially because they trigger migraines and motion sickness for me, and partially because a combination of adhd and terrible motor-skills make me bad at playing them. However stardew valley was relatively simple as a 2D pixel art game with simple controls. It had a lot of depth, so it kept me occupied for at least a couple of weeks. I played it years ago, but till today it remains as a fond memory for me.
Last week I wrote about tv variety shows that have a “healing” quality: stardew valley is a video game with a healing quality (yes I haven’t played animal crossing yet because I know I’ll end up glued to the screen for hours). There are no monsters to kill, no compressed timelines to adhere to, no dying, no characters going insane because we forgot to make them do something. One can do as much as they want and as little as they want. They can choose to complete quests at their own pace, or simply do whatever they want.
I was obviously addicted to playing the game, so I immersed myself in it. For that period I stopped looking at the phone or anything else. That gave me a significant realisation that is still has repercussions and meaning till today. I realised I am happier when I don’t have to interact with anybody, with the exception of my partner.
By happier I don’t mean I started having joyful feelings, I mean I stopped having so many painful feelings, and I was allowed to feel a sense of peace. This is counter-intuitive to all those studies that show that having a social life is key to better health and hence, longevity. I think it depends whether you perceive being alone as depressing, or aloneness is actually a precious gift.
We cannot expect billions of human beings to be the same: to want and need similar things. As a species we are biologically programmed to favour socialising, because moving in groups increased our survival rates. But throughout history there were probably always hermits. Hermits who were such not because they were ostracised, but they voluntarily sought hermithood and considered it a delight. During some of the lowest points of my life, I have found reading such stories of hermits greatly strengthening.
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.– Carl Jung, Book: Selected Letters of C.G. Jung, 1909-1961
The more life I experience, the more I feel that communication is extremely difficult. We seem to be speaking the same language, but interpreting it in vastly different ways. My partner and I have been together for almost 9 years, yet there are many instances where we were clearly not having the same conversation and it takes skill to seek clarification and not misunderstand. If 9 years of intimate living is not enough to significantly narrow that gap, I am not sure what would.
Every one of us is inherently different, and the environment we grew up in then shapes us even more differently. This can be beautiful in many ways, as we are beneficiaries of an amazing array of creativity and talent. But on the flip side everybody has their own separate hangups, chips on their shoulder, things that motivate or demotivate them, things that would be crushing to me but not you. Somehow we fail to understand that, and we have created a society that assumes we are all the same and we all need similar things.
In an 1:1 interaction there is often a ton of unsaid sentiment that can cause an accumulation of resentment and misunderstandings. It gets worse in a group. We are often talking to people as though we know them, but most of the time we don’t. We make a lot of assumptions about the other person. Every one has different principles, values, dealbreakers, things that are non-negotiable to them.
I think it can be rewarding to navigate these and form genuine strong relationships. In my opinion, these are rare. I often encounter stories of how friendships or even familial relationships are broken because one party decided to establish some boundaries, changed their social status, or due to some uncontrollable environmental factors. Most relationships are very conditional, which is fine if we accept the transient nature of it.
I don’t have the capacity to navigate the inherent differences in people’s expectations of communication and of a relationship. I can hardly manage the conflicts I have within myself. Every time an interaction goes sour it deeply hurts me. It could be rejection sensitive dysphoria, it could be cptsd, it could be my autistic brain, or all of the above — who knows?
I have spent so much of my life trying to be otherwise, like self-inflicted exposure therapy. To overcome my social anxiety I started meeting a lot of new people. I even started public speaking. I went to networking events, grabbed a ton of 1:1 coffee, developed seemingly deep friendships. Plenty of these relationships faded when I developed chronic illness and stopped being productive in a societally defined manner. Over the years I can count the number of people who cared enough to ask about my health on one hand. Was I really happy and fulfilled with so many people surrounding me? But what does it mean when I was only able to uphold these connections because of where I’ve worked and what I’ve worked on?
Only upon hindsight I was able to see that I was putting on a mask. I didn’t understand myself well enough to know what I truly wanted and needed. I was such a people pleaser, because I couldn’t bear the thought of people disliking me. It seemed nice to be popular, but only with awareness we may notice a sort of hollowness attached to a popularity that comes at an expense of our selves.
If we pause for a while to think about it: how much of unhappiness is caused by how much we care about the perception of other people? As soon as we’re born we’re concerned about getting the loving attention of our immediate family. Then we want to fit in with the kids at school. Followed by managing the perceptions of our colleagues, bosses and clients. Even when making art or writing blog posts we are afraid that no one likes what we create.
Why are we so preoccupied with what people perceive? Why do we value the approval and acceptance that is only possible with hiding massive parts of our selves? Isn’t it very illogical and a huge waste of our lives?
I am not immune to people’s perceptions, especially with a chronic history of low self-worth and fear of abandonment. But I feel like with age and practice I am gradually gaining the strength to just do my own thing. A lot of it is out of sheer necessity because of covid cautiousness. Being covid cautious these days requires a comfortable acceptance with being perceived as weird. I also feel a great degree of self-consciousness whenever I post something about covid because I know nobody wants to be reminded about it. But I keep asking myself what is more important: being ostracised, or doing what is right?
These days I feel a lot like how I felt when I played stardew valley. In the game I quietly farm and fish alone. So now, I just do things that is meaningful to nobody but myself. I try to write posts that are meaningful to me, I post the occasional drawing or photo, I share research about the harms of covid, I get a kick out of running and weight lifting by myself, etc. I do spend time with my partner, but she is just as socially isolated as me, so we’re sort of living in a tiny world that is cut off from everyone else. Our only social interactions are with social media mainly and occasional gatherings with family. Strangely, she also has the sort of personality that prefers to do things alone. Without her, I would probably be a total hermit.
People find this lonely, but I find it incredibly liberating. There are no perceptions or relationships to manage, I don’t have to worry about group dynamics or trying to maintain harmony. Of course there is privilege involved, I don’t have to work in an office. I can choose to deliver food or parcels – work that greatly lessens the interactions needed with people.
I enjoy the occasional asynchronous interaction with people online. The thing with asynchronous interactions is that we can choose to interact as much or as little as we want. Sometimes I go days without responding to messages, other times I exchange a flurry of messages with an internet friend online.
It seems like so many people like to play multiplayer online games, so much so that it can be difficult to find games that we can quietly play alone. But today while doing some light research about solo rpgs I found out that there’s a growing community of people who like to play tabletop rpg games alone. It is quite something to be able to do that. This is why I love the internet despite its problems. Just when we are thinking we are alone being this weird there is almost a community of people out there like us.
Isn’t it nice to play a game by our selves? We set the rules or lack of, the pacing, the variables. There is no need to be competitive or cautious, we don’t have to make anyone a loser or fear being losers. No one cares if we are slow to react or we prefer to take it easy. We can just quit playing whenever we want, not having to worry about being a party-spoiler.
Just to be clear I am not writing this post to convince anyone that going solo is “better” or anything. It is for some of us out there who are still feeling tortured because societal conditioning makes us believe we have to live life a certain way and that we will only thrive if we fulfil certain conditions.
For example, there were instances when people were trying to teach that succinct writing is better. Or that we have to write a certain way so we can gain an audience. But I want to reiterate it is totally fine to write for nobody but our selves. I know that this post is very verbose and longwinded but this is just an expressed outcome of my convoluted mind. I don’t wish to shape or compress myself on my own blog just so people like my writing more. I post my writing and stuff online for the occasional serendipitous encounter that the internet brings, but mostly it is a place where I can simply be myself. Once in while because I am willing to be totally weird here I find someone else who resonates strongly with my particular weirdness. It is the embracing of my aloneness that ironically makes me less lonely.
Sometimes what society perceives as “better” is not better for us personally. This is why self-introspection can be meaningful. We wouldn’t always get answers we need from other people, because other people are not like us. It took me a long time to learn this, especially because I fear being abandoned. It took me as long to realise that just because I fear being abandoned doesn’t mean surrounding myself with people is the solution. Ultimately, it is my self whom I should not abandon.
