There's No Need To Sigh Heavily

“A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind”

--John Cheever

While I do enjoy the quote, I somewhat disagree with it. You see…

Saturday while I was working, I saw a guy walking along the street.

Cars were passing him by…back and forth with the rapidity and liquidity of the crests of a whitewater river.

In direct contrast with the blur of speeding, colorful cars in the background, his pallid, paraffin figure dripped along slowly through the late August heat.

Sure, he was the same lonely man that Cheever described in the quote…with one major difference…

This man was not a stolid, gasping for air, bound to the edge of the bed, figure.

This ragged clothed, wiry haired man was a moving, breathing human being. Just like you. Just like me.

It has often been said, “Many people are one paycheck away from catastrophe.”

When I saw this urban nomad cross my view, I thought to myself…

“I think some people are just one friend, one incident, or one whatever away from loneliness.”

And then I thought to myself…

Of all the ways I never wanted to die I have always thought a fire would be the worst and drowning a close second.

But then I proffered to my mind...

I think the worst way to die...worst than fire, worst than water, worse than whatever, would be…

To die lonely.

Of all the myriad of ways one can die, I don’t want to die lonely, and that shadow of a man who passed the Beer Mine was just that. Dying lonely, however…

He was not a bone, a stone, or a stick.

He may have been full of Gilbey’s but that was his dilaudid, his morphine, his vicodin.

He was a stooped figure but not on the edge of a bed grasping for air like the autumn wind. He was a man, gasping for the breath of life…but still, a lonely man.

One who was looking for someone to throw him a bone, a stone, or a stick.

One who in better days would prefer a nice glass of wine to Gilbey’s…

A man who instead of being stooped over, would prefer to stand up straight and given the chance, hug a friend, or a family member…or a lover.

No, I don’t want to die lonely. And I won’t…and there is no reason you should either.

Use today to take stock of your friends, your family, and those who may have one time been close to you, and bring them back.

You’ll be better off and so will they.

Being broke is a matter of complication and circumstance. Being sick is a matter of past choices and heredity.

Being lonely?

It’s a choice that we make everyday and one over which we easily have control, and unlike other human conditions, one which we can all change in a mere five minutes.

And? That’s all I got to say about that.

Cheers!!