A Perfectly Good Deal

I was reading a book review in New York Times and this piece caught my eye. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/books/review/a-free-man-by-aman-sethi.html?ref=review) 

But on a good day, he can frame his isolation as a blessing. “Today I can be in Delhi,” Ashraf says. “Tomorrow I could well be in a train halfway across the country; the day after, I can return. This is a freedom that comes only from solitude.”

This is exactly how I feel. I have a certain freedom that comes from solitude. That I can choose to leave this way of living and move on to another is easier for me because I don’t have a partner whose life plans I have to synchronize mine with.

That this freedom comes with a flipside, loneliness, is also captured in the book.

Ashraf’s obsession with azadi has a flip side, akelapan — loneliness. Friendships are treacherous in Delhi, and he longs for his childhood friends in Patna, “a group that woke up together, skipped class together” and felt hungry, happy, depressed in “perfect synchronicity.”

This is one of those buy-one-get-one-free deals. If you choose freedom, loneliness comes for free. On days like today, it seems like a perfectly good deal.