By Soon Hyung Kwon
James Joyce, a prominent English writer of the
20th century, once confessed to his confidant that he suffered the most from loneliness at social gatherings, rather than when he was alone. The common hackneyed conversations concerning celebrities and football scores couldn’ t interest him any less. Nobody seemed to share his passion for finding the meaning of life, answering the unanswerable, and breathing reason. One of the loneliest things in life is not being able to relate to others, hence he was led to his pen and paper.
We live in a relatively lonely generation in which our parents’ café’ s and backstreets have moved into computer screens and smart phones, isolating each one of us into cognitive islands. Only when the electricity fails will we realize computers do not feel and televisions do not talk. This hyper-technological societal context has caused the‘ James Joyce’ s’ of our age to be even more immobilized from their homes, jammed into the paradox of the modern age in which improvements in communicative means deteriorates the quality of life into something McDonald’ s and fat saturated.
“ Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”- Henry Rollins
I believe, however, that each one of us has the potential to be a contemplative, critical individual. We all know there’ s something more important than MTV’ s and NBA’ s. The mysteries and enigmas of life ought to be more openly and popularly mentioned. In our innermost minds we crave for these things, but in our society that encourages mediocrity we are too timid to be alone, too afraid to be lonely. Thus majority will simply“ follow the flow” early on in their lives, consequently deceiving themselves that their trivialities really matter like children often do with dogmatic inculcations; losing themselves in the vast sea of short-term entertainment and losing grasp of what actually cut ice. However, these obstacles never impeded growth of the truly brilliant, the Tim Burton’ s and the Noel Gallagher’ s of our age. And the tales tell us that it is okay to be lonely if you’ re acting on behalf of what you think is right, what you think is important. In fact this kind of loneliness is good and necessary for progress in society. And these men would tell you to at least try, try to make a difference in this world, think about things that matter and ask important questions, albeit futile.
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