It’s almost 2 am. Sleep has condemned me to another night of desertion.
My mind is alert although my body and especially my legs are very tired.
Last evening, a friend had twitched a raw nerve and it hurt. Although, I had turned down two invitations to dinner and party simply because I wanted to take that time to run, I was so gutted by that friend’s remark, that my mind suddenly sought company. I came back from work, got dressed and went for the dinner invite to a book club that I had earlier turned down.
Human beings are essentially lonely. I have always felt so. And it becomes clearer to me during company. As I realized during the dinner, we cheat on the loneliness by amplifying ourselves. There were seven of us, three men and four women from although different backgrounds, having similar passion and modes of intelligence and seeking out new experiences and hoping that the volume of experience that we share with other people will allow us to connect. It was a book club dinner and we were discussing Nadia Hashmi. The thoughts exchanged over dinner and drinks - his thought, her thought, my thought – every thought being owned. Belonging to different personal minds. The distance between such thoughts are the most absolute in nature.
I listen to each of them keenly, while sinking in the tastefully done house in the suburbs of Dubai Marina. I feel like an Octopus when I hear myself speak. Reaching out with one tentacle while seven others are searching the empty space. The host is a lawyer and works for a reputed law firm in Dubai. Have known her for three years and wondering if she is my friend, close friend or acquaintance as per Facebook category. Wondering if I really know her and wondering if it matters that I know her.
Whilst driving back, my thoughts drift back to the cutting remark made by friend last evening, which had succeeded to wire me up. I smile. It is not his fault at all. It is in the beach of our thoughts. I reach the signal near my home and the smell of fresh pizza reminds me of my husband. The breaches between my thought and his thought, those streaming and ethereal flows which we denote as mine and his, can never be crossed.
During tonight’s discussion. As always, I consciously and painfully chose my words of opinion as I know that through my opinion I will be known and understood and in many ways that scares me equally or more than the need to be understood. It is conflicting really, the need to be understood against the risk of being judged.
When I got back, I still needed a run. I know it is difficult for some to understand that, but I am at utmost peace when I am lonely. Almost a pathological need.
The sexy loneliness of Thursday evening pushed me to a run longer than my usual. I jogged for three hours with water breaks in between and dint count the miles. I must have covered about 10 Km I think, maybe more maybe less. Nowadays, the distance doesn’t matter. When my legs or my neck start to complain, I start to count the miles.
Another runner passes by and smiles at me. He probably understands. I stop and turn to watch him jog.
To watch a long distance runner is a lonely sight which probably matches the loneliness of runner’s life as such. I feel, runners or not, we all travel paths that cannot be retraced or fully communicated. The image of a lonely runner speaks to us because it reflects a broader fact of life. Even among friends, spouses, parents, pets and children, one’s life is always lived alone, from the beginning to the end. Alkoothathil thaniye was a movie I saw as a kid and understood as an adult.
In a few hours’ time, I have a run with my Buhaira striders club. I like my Buhaira striders club, a group of folks who join together early Friday morning to run. We are all strange birds of different folk – different jobs, different talents, different politics, and different humor. I do not know them much at all and I don’t want to either. I just want to run beside them and not know them at all.
Yes the difference in these two clubs bring me to a sinking realization. No matter, how close we think we are with the other, there is a line that is denoted as mine and yours and can never be crossed. I am not sure, if it is Rumi who said – I can speak to you, I can write to you, I can walk with you, I can hold you and kiss you – but there is a part of you with which I will have no intimacy.
You cannot experience what I experience and I cannot experience what you experience. There will be such a part in each and every one of us. The strange experience of being a lonely long distance runner has taught me endurance- not to live too close to others; to give the sufficiency of space to live together but to live on despite being apart.
