Single, Not Alone for the Holidays

The holiday break is over, and Singletude is back! All of you readers, both those who visit frequently and those who stop by, er, once in a blue moon are wished the very best of everything, including heaps of peace, joy, and (not necessarily romantic) love in 2010! Before Singletude settles back into its weekly routine, I want to share some post-holiday thoughts.

The holiday season is rightly noted as a time of year when singles are particularly susceptible to loneliness. Although we don't all want to be coupled, most of us want to be included, and some of us find ourselves subtly or not so subtly butted out of family circles composed of arm-linked couples. Others are welcomed into the circle only to be shoved to the center, where we're grilled about our personal choices. Still others have no issues with family but are bombarded with depressing media images and couplecentric rituals that suggest singles are not high on Santa's list. And, of course, some single people do want to be in relationships and find the relentless focus on mistletoe and diamond rings that much harder to bear.

In short, it's easy to feel alone as a single. But being single doesn't mean you are alone. This hit home for me this New Year's Eve.

In the past, New Year's Eve for me was very much a date night, often marking the start of a relationship (no pressure there) or a romantic high note in a longstanding relationship. This was one of less than a handful of years that I spent it without a date or even the semblance of a date. My companions were a female friend, dating but single (we'll call her Gwen), and a very cool married couple (let's call them Nicole and Mike). As everyone knows, if you're not paired for the holidays, at no time is this more apparent than during the torturous tradition of ringing in the new year with a great big lip smack at the stroke of midnight. (In this era of swine flu, can't we just call an end to this unhygienic nonsense? ;)) Even though it's my choice to be single, and I don't usually feel lonely, this moment has a way of making me feel like a one-bladed scissor, a single chopstick, or a sole shoelace--conspicuous, useless, and, above all, alone.

So it was a pleasant surprise when the ball dropped and instead of feeling like an appendage, I was part of the circle as we all clinked glasses and exchanged hugs. Then we did something I've never done before. We ran up to the roof and, hearing another roof party down the block, called out our New Year's wishes to these strangers. There was a pause, and then we heard the answering cry, "Happy New Year!" We peered over the lighted rooftop railing and watched as passersby on the street below trickled out of their apartments to greet the first night of 2010 or headed back in after an evening of celebration, and every time one of them passed, we yelled out, "Hey! Girl with the dog! Guy in the hat! Look up! Happy New Year!" At first with confusion, then with dawning amusement, the pedestrians would look around, spot us, grin, and wave back.

Emboldened, we tromped down the stairs and, led by the vivacious Nicole, embarked on a mission to spread as much cheer as we could in one night. Our quota, Nicole decided, was to greet 30 strangers, but before we collapsed back at Gwen's place, I'm sure we had wished half of Soho and much of Nolita all the best in 2010. Everyone, absolutely everyone we passed, got a New Year's greeting. We gave a hearty "Happy New Year" to gangs of college kids, who whooped and high-fived us back; to glittering girls in pairs, who smiled shyly; to roving men, still dressed for work on Wall Street, who winked and raised their eyebrows; to young couples kissing on the sidewalk, who returned our good wishes so they could return to making out; to old couples, walking hand in hand, surprised and delighted that some of us "young folks" hadn't forgotten how to be neighborly; to foreigners in furs, who answered in incomprehensible accents; to hobos in doorways, whose eyes lit with pleasure to be seen and heard; to the revelers in restaurant windows, who raised their glasses; to the guy at the hotdog stand and the crew working late at Starbucks, who broke into grins on this holiday they had thought they would have to sit out; and to single people by themselves, walking their dogs in little plaid coats or rushing off to meet friends or just going home to their dark apartments after a long night, not necessarily expecting anyone to notice them, to care who they were or where they were going.

It was fascinating and heartwarming, in a way, to observe the reactions we got, especially from the other singles, some of whom would glance at us in surprise and perhaps mistrust before smiling in spite of themselves and returning the greeting. Others, sensing kindred spirits, were ready with ear-to-ear grins and boisterous good wishes of their own. That night, I realized that I wasn't alone, and neither were they. We were all in this together, hurtling toward a future none of us could foresee but were hopeful for nonetheless. This was shared human experience that transcended the temporal bonds of marriage or even blood kinship.

In 2010, I want to carry this revelation with me, that life should be about extending ourselves to others in recognition of our common human condition, not organizing our interactions around the artificial boundaries of marriage and the nuclear family. I want to remember that I am single, but I am not alone. I am in this world with millions of other people with the same desires, the same fears, the same struggles, the same satisfactions. When we can all learn that what unites us by birth is more important than manufactured titles that divide, it will indeed be a happy, new year.


As a single, do you feel alone during the holidays? If so, how do you cope with that feeling? Do you believe that single people are automatically alone? Why or why not? Can you share a holiday experience (or any experience) in which you realized that being single didn't have to mean being alone?


Fun Link of the Day


Do you have a question for Clever Elsie about some aspect of the single life? Have an unpublished rant or rave about singlehood? Write in, and you just might see your question in a "Singletude Q&A" or your rant or rave in a "Singletude Sound-off"! Singletude makes every effort to republish submissions in their original form but reserves the right to edit your submission for length and clarity.

Quotes for Singles

This has been a crazy-busy week, so despite good intentions, there was no juicy midweek post on Singletude. Next week, however, Singletude kicks off its first ever giveaway contest, so be sure to tune in then to find out how you can win over $150 in prizes! And, of course, this Sunday "Singles in the News" is back with more links to the best and worst of world headlines concerning the single state.

Today, though, I've rounded up some quotes that I think are particularly inspirational for those living the solo life. So pour yourself a glass of lemonade, head out to the hammock, and ponder these words of wisdom:


"If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning."
--Carl Rogers

"I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
--Henry David Thoreau

"You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self. Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never lose."
--Jo Coudert

"Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life. We receive counsels and comforts we get under no other condition."
--Amelia E. Barr

"I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure. A sphinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined."
--Chuck Palahniuk

"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."
--William Blake

"I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone."
--Cyrano De Bergerac

"What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be."
--Ellen Burstyn

"You alone know Yourself by Yourself."
--Bhagavad Gita

"One of the greatest necessities in American is to discover creative solitude."
--Carl Sandburg

"In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself."
--Laurence Sterne

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."
--Helen Keller

"A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable."
--Eileen Caddy

"I like being single. I'm always there when I need me."
--Art Leo

"Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your own presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement."
--Alice Koller

"Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward."
--Patricia Sampson

"I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married."
--Elizabeth I, Queen of England

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."
--Blaise Pascal

"It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverance for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say."
--Thomas Merton

"A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode."
--Chanakya

"To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet."
--Charles Caleb Colton

"Hail! Independence, hail! Heaven's next best gift, To that of life and an immortal soul!"
--James Thomson

"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius."
--Edward Gibbon

"You only grow when you are alone."
--Paul Newman

"The thoughtful soul to solitude retires."
--Omar Khayyam

"It is only poverty that makes celibacy contemptible. A single woman of good fortune is always respectable."
--Jane Austen

"Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up."
--Pearl S. Buck

"Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind."
--Albert Einstein

"Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself."
--Sir Thomas Browne

"But while I breathe Heaven's air and Heaven looks down on me, And smiles at my best meanings, I remain Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul."
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life."
--Charles Bukowski

"It is better to travel alone than with a bad companion."
--African proverb

"Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self."
--May Sarton

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with."
--Wayne Dyer

"Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone."
--Thomas De Quincey

"A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind."
--Daisaku Ikeda

"Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath."
--Mary Wollstonecraft

"The surest way to be alone is to get married."
--Gloria Steinem

"Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it."
--Simone Weil

"I restore myself when I'm alone."
--Marilyn Monroe

"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist...Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Whoever starts out toward the unknown must consent to venture alone."
--Andre Gide

"Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines."
--Paul Brunton

"Independence--is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes."
--Mark Twain

"He who lives in solitude may make his own laws."
--Publilius Syrus

"I was never less alone than when by myself."
--Edward Gibbon

"A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty."
--Ho Chi Minh

"When I'm alone, I can sleep crossways in bed without an argument."
--Zsa Zsa Gabor

"When I am alone I am happy."
--William Carlos Williams

"I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself."
--Peter Hoeg

"It is far better to be alone than to wish you were."
--Ann Landers

"I think that one of the things that has changed the perception is that there are so many more single people. In New York City, it's 47 percent. When you have that many people who are single, they have a bigger voice and they're more willing to speak and say, 'We're not miserable, we're not sitting at home waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right, we're having a good time.' And I think single people have better friendships."
--Candace Bushnell

"Solitude is often the best society."
--Proverb

"A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man--the one he used to be."
--Cesare Pavese

"Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude."
--Miguel de Unamuno

"I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing."
--Michel de Montaigne

"To be adult is to be alone."
--Jean Rostand

"Solitude is independence."
--Hermann Hesse

"If you are blessed, you are blessed, whether you are married or single."
--Greta Garbo

"Voyager upon life's sea, To yourself be true, And whate'er your lot may be, Paddle your own canoe."
--Sarah Bolton

"One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more."
--Thomas Jefferson

"If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself, or even less, in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct; and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight."
--Leonardo da Vinci

"It's better to be healthy alone than sick with someone else."
--Phil McGraw

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Solitude is the place of purification."
--Martin Buber

"He never is alone that is accompanied with noble thoughts."
--John Fletcher

"The first of earthly blessings, independence."
--Edward Gibbon

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
--Henry David Thoreau


Which of the above quotes speaks to you as a single person? Why? Do you have a favorite quote not mentioned here that inspires you as a single?


Fun Link of the Day


Do you have a question for Clever Elsie about some aspect of the single life? Have a rant or rave about singlehood? Write in, and you just might see your question in a Singletude Q&A or your rant or rave in a Singletude Sound-off!