we're spending a few days on business in
a town where we know no one it's
dinnertime and feeling claustrophobic in
our hotel room we wander the Main
streets looking for a place to eat the
bars and restaurants are filled with
loving couples and animated groups of
friends we gingerly enter a diner but as
we take in the warmth and convivial
atmosphere was struck by acute
self-consciousness we blush crimson and
clumsily turned to leave before an
approaching waiter has had the chance to
offer us a seat we eventually find a
dried-out sandwich at the station kiosk
which we eat furtively on a park bench
near some loitering pigeons eating alone
in public can be one of the great
hurdles of psychological life it can be
an exceptional trial because it forces
us to wrestle with a set of thoughts
that for most of our lives we
successfully push to the back of
consciousness that we are in essence an
unacceptable being tainted almost from
birth an outcast non specifically
diseased unattractive to others an
object of quiet ridicule or open mockery
undeserving of love and sinful to the
core we may not have this explicit
thesis in mind as we decline to sit down
by ourselves but the scale of our
embarrassment speaks of a latent
suspicion of our own being
how lovable we can feel as adults is in
large measure the result of how we've
been looked after by a few significant
figures in childhood no one is born with
a capacity to love and enjoy themselves
on their own we learn to soothe and care
for ourselves by first experiencing the
tender gaze of someone else and then
internalizing their reassurance and
kindness replaying it to ourselves in
isolated circumstances down the years
the lucky ones among us those with no
compunction about ordering a meal at a
table for one must somewhere in the
distant past have grown secure through
others admiration by which we now ward
off suspicions that the head waiter is
sniggering and the couple in the corner
are teasing us we who were perhaps at
that time not
larger than a pillow will lend a
powerful sense that we had a right to
exist that we were an asset to the world
that others should be pleased to see us
all of which means that now even when
the caregivers are long gone the charge
of love we imbibed lends us an
impression that the laughter from the
next table is innocent and that we
deserve to be brought another basket of
bread and the evening paper but the less
fortunate among us have no such
emotional blanket whatever our
accomplishments or status would never
far from a sense that everyone is
mocking and would have good reason to
try and harm us we need with a conscious
effort to do what others have learnt
automatically one side of the mind needs
to comfort the other must make the
reassuring noises
we never natively received must soothe
us because no one else ever did although
we're our own in the restaurant at the
moment we must strive to hold onto a
picture of the rest of our lives two
days ago we were laughing with our
friends of whom we do have some great
examples
tomorrow will be in an intense
discussion with some colleagues we have
been loved and held tightly in other's
arms before we're on our own right now
but were not social outcasts after all
we should remember along the way how
little anyone ever thinks of us in the
best possible sense everyone is for the
most part gloriously indifferent to
everyone else the person cracking a joke
with a group of friends has not reroute
adair evening to try and mock us the
attractive individual deep in
conversation with a companion maybe
talking about how lost they are in their
new job they aren't speculating on how
isolated or ugly we are those are voices
in our heads not theirs we should take
comfort to from the idea that there is
at points a distinct dignity and even
grandeur to being an outsider to not
always being part of the pack to taking
time to step outside the normal social
flow in order to consider humanity from
an oblique solitary angle the
temporarily friendless an isolated
person
has privileges and the possibility for
insights denied to those always
surrounded by the easy chatter of their
acquaintances the great champion of the
lonely diner the American painter Edward
Hopper knew how to lend appropriate
prestige to those who are on the outside
who can nurture ideas not sanctioned by
the crowd whose loneliness deepens their
soul and may make others long for their
friendship the central figure in automat
is far from an object of pity she is a
center of quiet depth and insight we
might yearn to sit with her rather than
feel sorry that she's as yet on her own
it is in the nature of the anxiety
around eating alone that we feel with
the only ones to suffer from it we
should take comfort in numbers there are
many of us out there and those of us who
are timid in this field are not wretched
or pitiable we're just taking time to
contemplate things from the outside for
a while and we will in the process be
readying ourselves for the deepest kinds
of friendship and self-knowledge when
these come along
our perspective cards feature tools for
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help to restore calm and clarity even
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