I’ll see you at the weighing in
When your life’s sum total’s made.
When your life’s sum total’s made.
Jethro Tull, ‘Two Fingers’
Do you ever look at prosaic older relatives, or people in that generation who are similarly philosophical [philosophical: ‘Having or showing a calm attitude towards disappointments or difficulties’]? The ones who are near housebound, and certainly used to uninterrupted days of solitude, but put on a cheerful face for you, or seem to have actually got used to spending the days alone.
And you can’t imagine it. You can’t bear the thought of it at all. And you almost wonder how you can be from the same species, having outlooks and tolerances so different. For you, a cancelled night out or a few hours alone exactly when you feel like doing something really fun are so horrendous and barren and unbearable…
It’s not even that these content people don’t see other people; it’s that they’re not going out, alone or in company, at all. They are staring around a living room (decoration/contents unchanged in 15-20 years) all day every day, perhaps with a few hours of bad TV and some food.
It’s not even that these content people don’t see other people; it’s that they’re not going out, alone or in company, at all. They are staring around a living room (decoration/contents unchanged in 15-20 years) all day every day, perhaps with a few hours of bad TV and some food.
And it’s one thing to grow old and widowed and out of contact as your generation ages and thins out, having previously had a life full of fun and friends and exhausting social frippery. But what about being just as alone, and being un-thought of, untouched, unloved, unlived… throughout life, when you’re ‘young’ (as flexible and relative as that term is), through a mixture of choice and circumstance?
Everything in youth is communal it seems, by default. You need to be seen, and seen to – first jabs and medical checkups, all the extended family wanting in on the cute new addition, nursery, schooling, sports, clubs and mates… you have to be around others to grow up and develop. And between legal requirements and social norms you are made to mix in large and generic peer groups anyway. Solitude tends to be an active choice for a kid.
But getting older, solitude seems to be the default, and community almost an active choice. People start to tailor the groups around them (family of your own, particular work colleagues, choice people who share the facilities, places and events your lifestyle takes you to, local familiars…). Or, if people don’t do this, they are left alone and forgotten by the people who do. And no: it’s no one’s ‘fault.’
...or for at most 9 days, assuming the last sighting of him on the 12th June was just that. 43 year old Lee Buckley was found on 21st June in a flat in Ashanti Mews, Hackney. He was wearing an England shirt.
So you don’t even have to shun others; sometimes it’s just that you are only one piece of other people’s jigsaw puzzles, which can leave you overlooked long enough for it to be too late. Too late to live, too late for it not to look tragic that your body could be undiscovered that long. In a busy world, your absence was not noticeable enough - even though you were known.
So you don’t even have to shun others; sometimes it’s just that you are only one piece of other people’s jigsaw puzzles, which can leave you overlooked long enough for it to be too late. Too late to live, too late for it not to look tragic that your body could be undiscovered that long. In a busy world, your absence was not noticeable enough - even though you were known.
Pia Davida Farrenkopf, who had $54,000 to keep her direct debits running and a neighbour who cut her lawn, died in 2008, ran out of money in March 2013 and later met with a mortgage foreclosure. She wasn’t discovered until 5th March this year - in the back of her Jeep Liberty, parked in her Michigan garage. She would have been 49 now. That’s what a life as observed by perfectly busy and happy people amounts to - paying your bills electronically and picking up your yard.
“There is no suggestion that anybody should, or could, have done anything different. It seems that he chose his somewhat reclusive lifestyle.”
Simon Allen’s body was found in the lounge of his Brighton flat on 19th November 2012. It’s believed he died in December 2010, when he would have been 50. Open verdict. No family traced. Few possessions. His home was one of Brighton’s large old Victorian semis sliced into flats. At the time the man from the ground floor said that residents kept to themselves. They just assumed he’d moved out.
Simon Allen’s body was found in the lounge of his Brighton flat on 19th November 2012. It’s believed he died in December 2010, when he would have been 50. Open verdict. No family traced. Few possessions. His home was one of Brighton’s large old Victorian semis sliced into flats. At the time the man from the ground floor said that residents kept to themselves. They just assumed he’d moved out.
The article even got a handful of comments on an online community for globally-placed Nigerians.
“I don't know about other places in the West, but I have heard of people talk about how lonely life can be. But this sadly is what life is like for many in the UK in particular, lonely with everyone keeping them self to them self that, even your next door neighbor does not see or know whether you exist or not.”
The weighing in, then. Let’s not quite leave Western life looking like a Facebook or Twitter feed, where your friends will forget you in the soup of everyone and everything else unless you post enough. Let’s not apply the marketing definition of ‘visibility’ to ourselves.
All your troubles come from yourself
Nobody hurts you - they don’t care
(Just as long as you show them a really good... really good time)
Nobody hurts you - they don’t care
(Just as long as you show them a really good... really good time)
Roxy Music, ‘A Really Good Time’
You genuinely care about everyone all of the time - that’s caring about every individual you know and have known (people rear up in your mind after ‘years’ of not thinking about them, so they’re definitely always there). But, in the front of your consciousness, you can only direct your care, empathy, and memories of the peaks you’ve had with a certain person for some of the time, and you might not get the timing right to be reciprocating it, or offering it when they need it - or they to you.
The above is the experience for both you and ‘them.’ So when it’s all quiet and backwater-like in life just try and remember this of all your friends and acquaintances: you are in there, and all of them are in here *taps temple.*
Sum total? You could probably break the scales with the weight of them.
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