All Alone

For the most part, I like people.

At least, I certainly don’t subscribe to the aphorism that l’enfer c’est les autres, especially because I’m pretty sure I’m misinterpreting it. But even as a lover of humanity, I feel comfortable creating a maxim of my own: Heaven is ourselves.

I don’t mean this as a statement of egotism, or even egoism. I just mean—to move out of the realm of pseudo-philosophy and into the realm of pseudo-patois—that we don’t rep alone time hard enough.

We spend our days here surrounded. We wake up to the rustling of roommates packing up for the day, and we go to sleep to the rustling of their sheets on the other side of thin walls as they pack it in for the night. Every moment in between, we run into teaching fellows, close to distant friends, and section kids. From lectures in Lowell to lunch in Leverett (bad call), social interactions abound.

Often, that’s what we need. For aloneness to feel as good as it should, after all, we have to choose it. Perhaps it’s not the case for everyone, but I know I didn’t enjoy eating at Annenberg with my best friend at the time: my Ec 10 textbook. There are moments, and maybe it’s most moments, when we want nothing more than companions at our side. And even at other times—the times where we’d rather shed companionship and watch Netflix in our beds—we need to know that if we called on the people we care about, they’d come.

But we also shouldn’t feel guilty when those other, Netflixy times strike. There’s value in hanging out with ourselves. It doesn’t make us losers; it gives us space to think.

As far as I know (I read the Yahoo Answers response to the question, “What did SATRE [sic] mean when he said ‘HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE’?”), Jean Paul Sartre was not suggesting that our relationships always end in agonizing acrimony. Rather, he posited that we see ourselves only through the eyes of others—in his own words, “We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves.”

Perhaps that’s true, perhaps it’s unavoidable, and perhaps it’s usually for the best. Obviously, viewing oneself in a vacuum doesn’t do anyone any favors. But neither does viewing oneself based solely on outside opinion and expectation. It’s all too easy for us as college students to fall victim to the second trap when outside opinion and expectation pervade every aspect of our lives. Alone time helps us break free for a little while. It gives us a respite from the voices of others constantly roaring in our ears. In the silence, we can hear ourselves think.

The thing is, I have a lot of questions I need answered. Am I really doing well? Am I really proud who I’ve become over the last two years? Am I really okay with Felipe’s changing locations? Honestly, I’m not quite sure. Intentionally or not, I’ve gotten other people’s perspectives—particularly on the last point. Now I ought to hear my own.

Luckily, each one of us will have the chance to do just that in the coming months. Sure, we have internships and international intrigues bound to get in the way, but that’s no matter. We can make room for ourselves, and maybe we’ll like it enough to start doing it at school, too.

I’ll spend this summer with the people (and animal) I love most—my parents, my brother, my dog, and this one other guy. I’m glad. But some nights, I think I’ll slip out of the house and go for a solo stroll on the sweltering D.C. streets. And if my family and I find ourselves hiking the mountains of Maine this August, I’ll forge on ahead at the end of the trail, just to take in the view on my own for a second before sharing it. It’s time I and I had a talk, just us.

The dog, of course, can come too.

Molly L. Roberts ’16, a Crimson editorial executive, is an English concentrator in Cabot House. You can follow her on Twitter @mollylroberts.