Call me Greta and leave me alone

I find it hard to understand people who continually want to be alone. I understand the occasional desire for a little solitude and I too feel this way at times, I'm sure we all do. I have a friend who has started to say "I want to be alone" more and more these days so that it comes to the point where I no longer know if I am her friend or not. Perhaps she will also claim that we misquoted her like Greta Garbo did when she claimed that she never said "I want to be alone" but instead said "I want to be left alone" and please note that there is a difference. Any one of you who knows of this wonderful Swedish actress's life will probably also know that she never married and she did indeed live alone. Incidentally I like to believe that Miss Garbo, who failed to turn up to the wedding proposed by Mister Gilbert, instead opted for a discreet but fulfilling love affair with another girl, the actress Miss Lilyan Tashman but of course this is all speculation on my part. I just like to dream that she had someone special in her life.

Human beings really are social animals and we need the company of others even if only to remind ourselves of our own humanity. Perhaps at times we have dreamed of living on a remote desert island, secure in the thought that we can survive far away from civilization and be dependent upon ourselves only. I think for most this is just a dream for a little more privacy and if we really did suddenly find ourselves cast away like Tom Hanks in the movie of the same name or indeed, the original Robinson Crusoe, then we may suffer great hardships in just trying to stay alive no matter about the question of our sanity remaining intact. If food & water was easy and in abundance and we had shelter from the elements, how soon would it be before we talked with phantoms and imaginary companions?

Crusoe had man Friday and Tom Hanks made a human face icon from a volleyball that he named Wilson.
Without the normal everyday conversations that we have, the disagreements, the opinions of others, criticism and even challenging debates we may find that we grow weak in our minds. Without discourse we become socially inadequate and cannot take our place in the social frameworks of family and friendships. Our talents would waste and our self confidence disappears and the loss of such self esteem makes us strangers to others.

Yet understandably, when she says "I want to be alone!" we can believe that indulging in too much of society could dilute us as individuals, it could dilute our principles and our interests. This society overload has us talking and thinking in stereotyped cliché and we may find ourselves compromising our ideals. In such a situation the little voices in our head can be disheartened and constrained from shouts of grand individual ambition to the softest whispers of group conformity. Solitude then becomes the antidote as we attempt to find ourselves again. Our voice that may have been lost in the crowd may once more assert its unique values.
Such reflections are perhaps plainly easy to see in our quiet and detached musings when so easy they can become lost out there amongst the masses and the multitudes.
It is said that to maintain a balance in life that all things should be in moderation.
I hope my friend will feel once more the want to come out. She deserves to smile and I think those who love her deserve to see that smile.