A Most Valuable Companion

My thoughts here go to many of my worldwide readers who must wonder too that even as world population continues to grow the more we find many who are alone or feel alone somewhere.  I dedicate this to all who find themselves longing to have someone or something to accompany them through the last mile of  their life's journey.  


Many a time it has been said, “Life is a journey”.  We travel in twos, as a family, even as an extended group, because we are social beings. We build communities because it is safer that way.  The individual can be strong but to have company is stronger still; a whole village, a whole nation strongest.  But if we were to pick one in our life’s journey, who should it be, or what should it be?  Is it a significant other, a friend, a dog or another comparably docile and friendly creature?  Whoever or whatever it is, we need one to accompany us on that journey.

“A good companion shortens the longest road”     - Turkish Proverb

But then…

“I love to be alone. I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude”.  -          Henry David Thoreau

The Swedish actress Greta Garbo who starred in many love-themed films, beautiful that she was and always paired with equally good looking men, was also famous for having the most number of quotes on being alone. The most well-known one was, expressed in her unmistakable Swedish accent, “I vant to be alone”.  (‘w’ pronounced as ‘v’ became her trademark elocution as well). She had expressed that sentiment so many times in her real life and indeed she never married, had no children and she died alone.  (By the way, Ms. Garbo for most of her movie career starred in silent films. It must have been quite surprising for movie fans then to hear her speak when sound was introduced to film when they heard her say, “vant”). 

But then again …

“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone”.      Robin Williams

Robin Williams was an only child. He’d tell the story that a good part of his becoming a comedian was growing up mostly alone with very little interaction with other kids, so he pretended to have an imaginary friend/s.  Most children went through that phase. We created companions in our heads, talked and played with characters created in our minds.  Consciously or sub-consciously many did but ultimately most outgrew it.

Robin told this episode in his life growing up, “My childhood was lonely. Both my parents were away a lot, working, and the maid basically raised me. And I think that's where a lot of my comedy comes from. Not only was the maid very funny and witty, but when my mother came home I'd use humor to try and get her attention. If I made mommy laugh, then maybe everything would be all right. I think that's where it all started”.

Robin Williams was well known for ad-libbing and improvisations and did them so well that producers and director/s gave him practically free rein in “Mork & Mindy”, because he was just simply irresistibly funny at adding unscripted lines.  In stand-up comedy he was brilliant at improvisation that he hardly stayed on a set script.  His companion friends in early childhood trained him well.

 

It can be said that he found companionship with entities that were in his head.  As children, didn’t our dreams become our companions? They were our refuge when things didn’t go well. They were our inspiration when we wanted to do well.  Dreams were cheap, we travelled with them, or find comfort in them, and they were at our beck and call. They quickly move away when we were to do something else or had friends and games and sports to pre-occupy us.  Then just like that we summoned them when we needed to be somewhere else.  We filled our imagination with dreams. We day-dreamt but we had real ambitious dreams too.  Our desires to do well in school, at sports, at building things, were all propelled by dreams – to excel, make something of ourselves, emulate others, or follow the footsteps of our fathers or our heroes. Along the way our dreams were our most inspiring, if not entertaining companions.

As we got older we switch our inner/personal companions into ideas. They were not dreams any more.  If dreams acted like apparitions, ideas had concrete forms. They were a focused expression of something that we can actually act on.  Even if we were only to write about it, muse over it, or create or invent with it.

Author Edith Wharton wrote in one of her short stories, “The Descent of Man”, about the main character, Professor Linyard, who would go out by himself sometimes, unaccompanied except by the ideas that were in his head.  Edith Wharton wrote,

“To Mrs. Linyard’s observant eye he had appeared to set out alone; but an invisible traveler had in fact accompanied him, and if his heart beat high it was simply at the pitch of his adventure: for the Professor had eloped with an idea”.

Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Lise Meitner, Wright Brothers, Hewlett and Packard, all, and others like them, must have had monster companions to accompany them.  Not only did they elope with ideas, they married them. And today we benefit from the off springs of those marriages – men and women and their ideas.

We do not need to be like those extraordinary folks for our ideas to help us in our journey. We engage in Do-It-Yourself projects with ideas in our heads, our hobbies are where these ideas go out to play with us. Renovating a home, go on some unique travel adventures, and so on and on, begin as ideas in the mind that we acted on. Keep in mind that nothing original we ever get to do without first engaging our companion idea into fruition.

Greta Garbo and others like her chose to be alone.  What about those who are alone not by choice but by circumstance. We have people in prison at 23-hour solitary confinement. Justice system notwithstanding, loneliness could very well be the ultimate punishment to the living and most horrifyingly unbearable for anyone put there by a flaw in how justice was arrived at or applied.

Then we have those living alone in their homes, old and weak, and more by a much higher number in nursing homes. The former is tragic by sheer helpless isolation; the latter a much sadder state to be lonely or feeling alone even when there are people around.

Happiest among these folks, or managing well, are those who choose to be accompanied in the most challenging part of their journey by a most valuable companion.  They choose to bring along their thoughts and memories; or rather for these to bring them along to places and times they can no longer travel to.  They can get their minds to host a reunion of sort for memories to come together, or thoughts to collaborate and give hope, to comfort and to assure. Memories can be plucked from the bins of our experiences; thoughts can be random visitors that come and go – both can be willing companions if we summon them.  Thoughts and memories help to exercise our minds.  We can summon them into our arm chairs or in the comfort of a kitchen table with a piping hot coffee or chocolate within easy reach. They will stay until we let them go. If we are to travel they come not as extra luggage but to help lighten or shorten the trip. 

Thoughts and memories will never complain about the journey, are never jealous, or intrude uninvited and leave like polite guests. Some will say, “But what about thoughts that don’t want to leave us alone, and painful memories that come barging in?”  Well, we actually hold the key to the door of our minds. They come if we surrender the keys to them.  But better still is to have good thoughts and beautiful memories stand guard by the door to keep the unwanted ones out and as far away as possible.

Those are all messages to everyone who seek companions if they are actually alone physically, or traveling by themselves, or who feel alone even in the presence of other people.

To those fortunate to have someone by their side always, I leave with this anonymous quote:

“All relationships have one law. Never make the one you love feel alone, especially when you’re there”.             -             Anonymous