I’ve been alone a lot in my life, and I’ve never tired of it.
Robert B Parker
Playmates
We’ve long been fans of mystery stories, from the Hardy Boys to Nero Wolfe to the dean of Baker Street Sherlock Holmes to Lew Archer to the 89th precinct as well as others, including Robert B Parker’s (1932-2010) Spenser series. Now, Spenser mysteries weren’t the most technically brilliant mysteries the genre has produced, but Spenser was funny and thoughtful and had some compassion and his solving of cases may or may not have been in strict accordance with how the authorities might have handled matters. Parker, frankly, spent most of the early part of this century mailing the Spenser series in, but his characters were always a treat to visit with, a useful lesson for any aspiring novelist.
I’ve been alone a lot in my life…
All of us spend time alone, of course, the amount dependent on our circumstances and how much solitude we can tolerate. Some spend more time alone than others and some like it more than others because being alone – be it for an afternoon or a lifetime – isn’t easy for some.
It’s useful and, perhaps, curious, to note that we are the only person we will see every day of our lives and our periods of solitude are easier to bear if we like ourselves. This isn’t always easy. We have the same faults and foibles as any other human and this, combined with the fact we know ourselves better than anyone, means we might not always like the reflection the mirror shows.
…and I’ve never tired of it.
The best way to never tire of ourselves is to completely know ourselves because before anything good can happen in our lives we must know exactly what we are about. We are never going to know ourselves if we spend our time reacting to outside influences and jumping whenever someone or something else tells us to jump. The only way we will ever be completely in tune with who and what we are about is by listening to our hearts and trusting our instincts because our hearts will tell us what we should be doing with our lives while our instincts tell us how to go about doing it.
When we do this we are always in tune with how we should be spending our lives and we will always be content whenever nature and circumstance give us time to ourselves.
Quotes are from Gaylon’s personal quote book, begun in 1988 in a hotel room in Berkeley, California.
