Ponder this: No matter how hard you think your intelligence, your wit, your money, your youth or your power, can make you different from others; somehow better than everyone else—immortal even!, as always is, in the end, the Creator levels the playing field—and silent hellish tears of despair rain down upon the stage in that last moment of moments upon loss for trying…in vain. -Cliff Pyke
Just a few words from your resident agony uncle, on the lonely: I walked to the window of my apartment and looked down to the sidewalk, and behold, a pot of gold, in form and variety, with feelings just below the mind that I might guess to be of the waiting kind. Waiting there, as often the lonely will, for someone or something to un-lock their gilded cage….
Strangers walked by as I observed; he side glanced, said no words of greeting and then looked away—as if forbidden the fruits of kind words exchanged with others. I turned away from my reverie, thought of getting old, and how for some, loneliness can become so complete…as minutes turn to hours, hours turn to days, and days into years…into lines on my face, grey hairs worn so reluctantly—the inevitability of age that the young look upon [in others] with such fearful disdain, reluctantly knowing deep down within, that quietly, in time, their day will come too…some will become so old and lonely they’ll wish to be dead.
I lit a smoke and sat down, as I often do, in the middle of the couch, and I looked at the walls of my familiar gilded cage, and thought to myself…how much more lonely, loneliness can be, when it has a name and a face; as I stare around me and this familiar realization, eyes more inward than out, and search for words to express my thoughts…I visit her again…she, like a shadow, my loneliness, my friend…my end
Yes, ponder my words as you walk down the streets of your life and notice the bits of you in other people’s eyes; the happiness’s, the joys, the ups and downs, the embarrassments, the failures—the very time itself! See the tear painted faces of clowns, the pain of the rain as it dances its dance down below, reigning you in too; and finally, take note of…that lonely bubbling just below the surface of your smile, as you too realize you’re no different than anyone else—we all walk together once in a while; we all walk that long lonely mile….
© 2006
Written by Cliff Pyke, Saturday, August 26th, 2006
Originally titled “A Few Words from Your Resident Agony Uncle: On the Lonely”
Edited & Re-titled “That Lonely Bubbling Just Below the Surface of Your Smile”