YOU, You, you and you are not alone

What does it mean to be all alone? How can you experience solitude? When such complex questions are posed, I call upon the greatest philosopher of modern times, Me.

On a cold winter morning, when the heater in the room was cranked to its maximum capacity, which made the cold winter morning, sweltering hot, I melted on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, when these questions stared at me.

From the time of your birth, you are in constant interaction with some one in the outside world. It starts off with your mother and then your father and then it branches of to tens and thousands of people. When you are first spat into this world, you are you. When your mother looks at you, unknown to you, she sees someone else in you. She glances at you and imagines that you look like your distant uncle twice removed. This coats you with a personality. Then your father looks at you and he claims you look like his great grand father when he flinched at his cat. Thus from the time you are born, there are already three yous: You, You from your mother’s eye and You from your father’s eyes. And as people start seeing you, the real you gets coated with all the characters that people around you see you as, resulting in the pure You to get buried somewhere deep under.

As the earth keeps revolving and as the years pass by, you start behaving like the way people want you to. It’s like changing clothes according to the occasion. You see your aunt, and you behave the way she wants you to see you as. You see your friend and you remove the coat that you wore for your aunt and wear the coat given to you by your friend. You make sure that the smile you flash at someone is perfectly timed and makes the cute beautiful eyes twinkle or you raise your voice to voice an opinion to be the focus of attention. Ultimately you are never you. You are always the way people want you to be.

So, this brings us back to the question that stared at me. What does it mean to be left alone? Imagine shunning away from civilization and locking yourself in the room. Does this mean you are alone? Definitely not! You still trudge along all the coats given by you by the world and you glance at these coats all the time. You think of what made your mother angry, you think about the time when you were slapped by your teacher and you cry at the time your friend betrayed you. And after all these frustrations, you try to take revenge on the world, by hiding behind the coat they gave, while never removing it. The world knows that you are hiding behind their coat and know exactly what your next move would be.

So, I tried this one day. I wanted to dig up the original Me in me. But, I had by this time developed some million varieties of Me that they just overpowered Me. I just couldn’t be alone. I was always accompanied by all the other fake Mes, pushing and prodding Me to act in a certain way, in a certain time, in a certain place, and never allowing the unblemished Me to act on the mind of it’s own. “What if I give back the coat they gave me?” you might ask. Well, that’s the trick. Even if you throw the coat back to one of them, their view of You changes and they now give you another brand new coat. It’s a vicious cycle

Finally, I concluded, I am never alone and I can never be alone.