
I cannot escape others no matter how hard I try. My efforts are all in vain. I am constituted by others. My very being is made from two others, influenced in a culture crafted by others, using a language not my own but imposed by others. Is there anything left of me? Is there a “me” at all? I am surrounded by others, even when I imagine I am not, driving down a lonely road built by others, in a vehicle manufactured by others, navigating with technology imbued with a plethora of others. Why this longing for distance? What is this strange craving for solitude? My yearning for some separation it seems is a yearning for actual otherness, beyond anything I have ever known, as an inextricable composite of others. My longing is for mystery. If Pascal got it right—that all humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone—then the real rub may not be our occasional uneasiness with solitude but the inability to secure it in the first place. We are never alone and never have been. Should this be a source of comfort or concern, good relief or grounds for paranoia? We are caught in a web of connections, a consolation if a caring community, and a lamentation when something else. Our entanglements are as much internal as external. When I look and listen within, I discover a deluge of voices, a complex of competing claims, a confluence of countless interrelations, a temperament not my own. A man can do what he wants, Schopenhauer noticed, but not want what he wants. I want to be alone, and this want is not my own.