By: Fida Hussain Bhat
Loneliness frightens people. We are not willing to confront it and handle it. It disturbs our composure and estranges us. We prefer gregariousness to loneliness. A mob around us makes us forget our own self and alienates us so remote that when loneliness surfaces our own self, we are afraid and feel strange and hanker for company. The hours of loneliness have become unmanageable for us.
Unless we disentangle ourselves from the hustle-bustle of life, we cannot discover our lost selves and its realms will remain unexplored throughout our lives leading us to live inauthentic lives. This world is absorbing and attracts us towards its charm and charisma keeping us engrossed in its pageantry at the cost of our own true selves.
Martin Heidegger says in his book, ‘The Being and Time’, that the world has entangled us and deprived us of our authentic being. We never devote time to explore our own being. The affairs of life occupy us completely and we get no opportunity to meet ourselves. Alexis Carrel says in his book, Man, the unknown, that man has attained the pinnacles of progress in science and technology but he hitherto failed to know himself. Man is bigger than universe and contains astounding mysteries that wait for exploration but world has engaged man so much that he never sits alone with himself to deliberate and meditate about his authentic being. His authentic being become the victim of everyday hustle-bustle of life and estranges him from his own true self.
Rousseau writes in his treatise on education, Emile, that a child should be home taught till he becomes enough strong to escape from the harmful effects of the bogus values of society and holds on to his own authentic being. He even questions the educational systems that teach wrong things to children alienating them from their true selves by snatching their freedom and binding them in the chains of socially constructed stern laws.
Shaheed Muthari says that bogus social values are highly detrimental to the Fitrat[authentic being] of a human being. It murders the inherent traits of a human being and makes him forget his assigned role in his life. Every step takes him down from his divine stature and belittles him shamefully by trapping him into those practices that ruin his potentials and makes his life a complete wasted.
Wordsworth says in his poem, ode on the intimations of immortality, that we lose connection with the divine when we are born into this world. More we grow from childhood to adulthood, more alienated we become from the divine source. Alienation has been denigrated by the false social values and we are not allowed and given time to do reflection in loneliness to understand ourselves better. We are told to surround ourselves by the friends, relatives and other kins all the time. So when we sit alone for some time, we feel estranged, we feel something strange happening to us, we feel we are in a strange world where we don’t know anyone.
We have forgotten ourselves to an extent that confronting our own selves frightens us and makes us crave for company. The wisest people of the world were great loners who deliberated on the mysteries of this world in their loneliness and came up with pearls of wisdom that stunned people.
The great Sufis of the world got awakening in their loneliness. They busied themselves in meditations and unraveled the secret doors of intellect. We have not understood the power of loneliness, whenever we undergo a serious dilemma about any issue of life and we fail to resolve it by finding its answer, we sit alone and think over it and finally find out the solution. Loneliness helps us to understand the problems of life better. It is a blessing that cannot be left unthanked and unappreciated.
We should promote loneliness as a divine blessing to understand ourselves better and when we understand ourselves better, we understand this universe better. It improves our life and makes our life full of joy and gratitude. This world is a very dangerous place. It wants to keep us busy with itself snatching us of our authentic being that is our true wealth.
Hazrat Ali (AS) says that man is a bigger than universe but we remain busy in trivial things and lose ourselves in the bogus charm of this world. He (AS) says that this world appeared thrice in front of him to deviate him from the right path but he recognized it each time and abandoned it thrice and warned it to go and deceive someone else. This is possible only when you understand the tricks of the world that deviate you from the right path and keep you busy in the pomp and show of this world.
The writer can be reached at azaadbhat28@gmail.com.