Isolation and Solitude

It’s a shame that more people don’t walk in L.A. It’s too bad that the convenience of speeding from one location to the next outweighs the therapeutic effects of a casual stroll down Wilshire.

It’s dusk and as I shuffle along the sidewalk, only glancing up at every third car horn, I notice that I’ve already passed five cars in the span of 20 steps. I’m counting. They haven’t moved. I have. I shift my eyes to the right and study the face of a businessman mouthing angry words into his Bluetooth headset. Fancy car, fancy man. Everything about him is clean in a way that is uncomfortable and, moreover, unhealthy.

It looks like he’s washed and pressed his shirt a thousand times before donning it, a pristine disguise meant to conceal his very human flaws.

I wonder how many times he scrubbed his hands at the sink before leaving the office, purging himself of the germs he no doubt contracted from one handshake after the next.. Human interaction, washed down the drain.

Do his kids run out to greet him when he gets home, I wonder?

A large sedan tries to merge in front of his car. Red light. No one is moving, and yet the man in the pressed shirt inches forward to prove a point. Do not pass. Every man for himself and damn the rest.

Isolation. I know nothing about this man, can only judge him based on this quick snapshot of his life. It’s not his best moment. I momentarily catch his eye, and I quickly pretend as though I’m looking through his window at a point just beyond his head. Behind my sunglasses, I close my eyes quickly in a silent apology.

It’s wrong to stare.

I continue on my walk down Wilshire, and I’m all too aware that I’m the only one out on the barren L.A. sidewalk. It’s too much. The smell of car fumes finally gives way to the overwhelming scent of pines as I make a quick left to start the steep ascent up a hilly residential street.

Escape.

People say they need therapy to figure out what’s wrong with them, what other people have that they don’t. Money. Happiness. Sanity. Time. They want a quick fix, a diagnosis and a pat on the back and reassurance that everything will be okay – they don’t have time to dig deeper toward the root of the problem, nor do they want to admit that their dissatisfaction might stem from a problem within themselves.

Generally speaking, people are always in pursuit of a kind of simplicity they claim to have achieved at some point in their lives. The reality, though, is that this simplicity still resides within them, and always will.

But it takes a certain kind of calm to find it again. The kind of calm they can only find in solitude, but never in isolation.

Walk it out.