Plato once wrote a very lovely book. It is called the Symposium. It's pretty much my favorite of all the books the great philosopher wrote. [By the way, Plato is probably the greatest philosopher of all time, in my honest opinion, and if the Symposium is my favorite of his books, you can imagine what an impression the book made on me when I read it two semesters ago, in my Ancient Philosophy class.] In the book, a certain Aristophanes explained the concept of soul mates. He said that, a long time ago, all humans were made of two selves joined together: two heads; two sets of arms, legs, and so forth. However, the gods were jealous and split each human, so that everyone became halved - pretty much how we are today - and, in the need to be "whole" again, everyone has since then been searching for their other half, their soul mate.
Some people find true love in the eyes of a soul mate; maybe a high school sweetheart; maybe someone they met in church or at a party, or somewhere cool. Some end up married and build families together. They share all their joys and sorrows, and "live happily ever after," as in the story books. But others do not. There are people out there who are destined to be alone. I am one such person and, in this post, I will explain why it is that I will end up alone for the rest of my life. I've had a relatively difficult life. I'm not saying my life has been the hardest, no. But it has not been easy. Not by a long shot. In this life I have had to give up very many things, things that some people take for granted: the love and support of a family; close friendships; romantic love; material wealth; genuine freedom; simple joys - quite a lot indeed. Sometimes I wonder how bad they must have it who grew up worse than I did, because I know I didn't leave much to be desired by way of bad and unpleasant.
The first reason why I will end up alone is that, in this life, I will never love myself holistically enough to give my self completely to another person. To love oneself is to possess oneself completely. The Latin maxim goes: Nemo dat quod non habet, which means: No one gives what they do not have. If I do not love myself enough, then I do not have myself enough, and if I do not have myself enough, I cannot give myself enough. I will need to spend the rest of my life struggling with self acceptance, inching closer and closer everyday toward the life project of self acceptance and self love. Perhaps I might attain some measure of self acceptance by age 93, if I live that long. But by then, I would be past finding any romantic love on earth. I would be close to the grave; close to ending the entangling of my spirit with my body. I will end up alone because I do not possess my self enough through love to give it to another person.
The second reason I will end up alone in this world is that I am an inchoate soul. I am a compendium of identity crises. My spirit does not fit my body. On the inside, my spirit is evolving from its situation of having previously inhabited the body of a royal, Caucasian, military woman. On the outside, I am an impoverished, Black, African male. I have nationality identity crisis. I am negotiating other phenomenal demographic identity crises as well, of such a magnitude that would make anyone who would otherwise want to be a close friend keep distance. Because they just wouldn't know where to place me. There are some people who would otherwise be my friend, but I'm "not Nigerian enough," or "not Black enough," or simply "proud, arrogant, larger-than-life; too this, and too that, and too that other thing." I am a person who is difficult to endure, and my personality sometimes comes across as overbearing, intimidating, intense and even frightening. Plus, my size (six feet, 300lb bulk) does not even begin to help matters. I will end up alone because I am a personality misunderstood.
The third reason I will end up alone is because of the sacrifices I have made just to attain any level of success in this life. Life dealt me big blows early on: the suicide of my father; the plane crash death of my mother; my suffering destitution, and so forth. Every step of the way, just to get on, I've had to make sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. I had to sacrifice my dad and my mom - but in doing so, I unwittingly sacrificed interpersonal relationships as well. And so, to the extent I intend to succeed in my chosen profession, it is to the same extent I will have no friends. Recall in this regard what I said was the principle about making sacrifice in Ancient Traditional Religion. When a person that wanted to be rich went to see a native medicine man to ask for wealth and the seeker was asked to sacrifice a beloved relative, the person was inadvertently sacrificing interpersonal relationships on the altar of ambition. This is what I have unwittingly done. Whenever I am down and out, so-called friends pick up my calls and all what not; the moment things begin to turn around for the better for me, they vanish. I used to have a so-called best friend - may I never to see him again - that used to pick up his phone whenever I called him; but as soon as I gained admission to the seminary, out of extreme jealousy he completely blocked my number from his phone, as did all my other so-called friends. All of this in any case is not their fault. It is the spiritual reality of sacrifice. And I accept that I set it all in motion by my sacrifices; the sacrifices I made just to progress in life.
The fourth reason I will end up alone is because of my vocation. Celibacy is one of the Promises a religious person makes. Priests in the Catholic Church do not marry and, because of increasing isolation in the world, many without nuclear families or best friends to lean on definitely end up alone. I have neither solid nuclear family nor best friend and so, if I become a priest - and I hope I do - I will definitely end up alone. A fifth reason I will end up alone is because of what the character, St John Rivers, said in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. He said, "Some people are made for love, while others are made for work." I am one of those made for work, not love. I am the slave soul. There are probably other reasons why I will end up alone, but these aforementioned five will suffice for this blog post, lest it gets too long. Let me now explain what I will do to cope. Because it is painful to be alone, these are some of the things I will do, as an inchoate, unlovable, slave soul, to cope: The first thing is, I will derive some measure of emotional fulfillment from my ministry hopefully as a priest. What does this mean? It means that for me, rather than get a sip of sweet love, needful love - the love that everyone needs to survive - from being in a romantic relationship, I will get it through serving others. When I say mass and hopefully give a good homily, I will get some emotional gratification from that; when I visit the sick to bring them the sacrament of Unction, I will derive emotional gratification from that; when I listen to folks in the confessional or in counseling I will get emotional solace from that as well - in everything I do to serve and help others, I will derive sweet emotional consolation, which I can convert to the same sustaining energy that romantic couples get from their being with each other in viable relationships, especially as I am a slave soul. It will be enough for me.
The second way I will derive emotional gratification is by reflecting on the times when I served others. And so, when I am back from say, administering the sacraments or doing some ministry or volunteer work, I can derive emotional gratification from thinking about how it went; how possibly I helped someone get better, feel better, do better. When I lie on my bed after having said a mass, or visited with the sick, or led a bible study group, I will derive emotional solace by thinking about the smiles on the faces of the people I helped, and so forth. The third way I will derive emotional gratification is by participating in the lives of others briefly at a time. I will never have close friends. But I will have very many acquaintances that are friendly to me, and to whom I am friendly, for short periods of time. What this means is that I will never have a friend that is close to me; that will pick up the phone from time to time and call me; with whom I will share deep moments - no. But every once in a while, in brief instants, I will find myself enjoying the company of a person or a few people. Those brief flashes of opportunity; those short situations - they will also give me emotional consolation. So, for example, the other day a fellow seminarian suddenly said: Samuel, let's go to Wendy's for a shake. We went and had shakes together, and we sat and talked for about an hour. We are not by a long shot close friends, this seminarian and I, but in that hour as we were having shakes, I sipped in the emotional consolation that the situation - not the person, but only the situation - afforded me, and I think, reflect, reminisce on the situation and it gives me consolation. Or when another classmate of mine said we should study together one time, as we prepared for our Metaphysics midterms. We studied for an hour and a half. I enjoyed the situation very much. This individual will never be a close friend, ever - but that short period was in itself a consolation.
A third way I will cope as an alone soul is through the media. My laptop is indispensable to me: I participate virtually in the lives of others by watching videos. Particularly, I love feel-good and family-based videos. Serials like 7th Heaven; Days of Our Lives; Secret Life; Keeping Up Appearances; Fawlty Towers, and so forth are regular staple for me. I watch these television programs and I identify with the characters in them: their family members become my family members; their joys and pains and struggles become mine as well. Sometimes, I even dream about these characters. They become real to me. In real life, someone talks and I immediately remember a similar thing a television character said and I smile to myself. In these television and video programs I get lost and I escape into a soothing world, a world that I can never be part of in this life of mine, and I am greatly consoled. I cry, I laugh and I share all the emotions I encounter in those media banquets. I would be lost without television; and not just audiovisual media, but print as well - which brings me to this blog. I need this blog to live. I have become attached to it in such a way I did not know would happen when I started it. This blog is a companion. I write in it everyday to remind myself that I am alive; when it does sometimes feel like I am in a cage, perhaps alone in the concentration camp of the soul, I shout out loud that someone might hear me. That is what this blog is; it is shouting out loud that someone might hear me, or that I might hear myself.
Another way I will cope as an alone, unlovable, inchoate, slave soul, is to pray. By prayer, I don't mean mouthing many meaningless words. Prayer for me is ethics. The good we put out there in the world comes back to bless us. The hypocrisy of loud-mouthed, talkative so-called "prayer warriors" does not appeal to me. The quiet good deeds of individual souls seeking God in truth does. Laborare est orare - it is so the maxim goes: To work is to pray. This is the sort of prayer I am talking about. Simply being alive is the hardest thing a person could ever do. Especially when one is alone. But there is a difference between aloneness and loneliness - it is what Iyanla Vanzant would say. I'd like to see myself as alone, not lonely. And the way to cope would consist definitely in selflessness. Temptations to overeat abound, naturally - and temptations to feast on unhealthy media do as well, but we must recall that each succumbing to these temptations further isolates the individual and makes it hard to serve others selflessly. We cannot serve God and the body at the same time (Matt. 6:24). All I can pray is: God, help me to cope in healthy ways. Keep me consoled by your divine providence. And if I but learn the lesson my soul has to in this life, my spirit may not need to suffer so much in the afterlife.
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