The Feeling of Loneliness

 

The Feeling of Loneliness

The Story of My Life

 

            The titles may be confusing and not related.  However, during the last eighty plus years, I have had so many ups and downs, so many ins and outs, so many anticipated and unexpected; almost everything could be related.

            Once I read an article talking about a middle age man, standing in a New York substation in the middle of day, surrounded by over a hundred persons and felt alone as he was there all by himself.  I joked about it.  It sounded like something not realistic.  I concluded that it was the fictional creation by some author to make the article sounded more convincing.

            Recently, I moved to a retirement community.  The house was next to a large office building with a huge parking lot for their employees.  The parking lot was barely filled during weekdays because most employees selected to work at home, and was almost empty during weekends.  The sidewalks were landscaped with beautiful flowers.  It was very pleasant to walk around, breath fresh air and enjoy the flowery paths.

            Since exercising was a must especially for my age with relative low physical activities.  The walk from the retirement house, down to the parking lot, around the office building and back to the retirement house took about 25 minutes.  So the distance and time was perfect for an exercise as a hobby.  Besides, the environment was so pleasant and so peaceful, it gave me the opportunities to day dream about my life during the last eighty years; both the exciting moments and the unpleasant occurrences.  It reminded me all the achievements I enjoyed to remember and the unpleasant time I tried but unsuccessful to forget.  One way or the other, when I “reviewed” my life way back, loneliness was not in my dictionary, at least not in my memory during the first few days of my hobby-walk.

            Here it started.

            I was under ten years old.  My father was a very successful business man.  Because of the corruption of the police force and the government officials, kidnapping and ransom for money was popular as they knew, with bribery, they could get away from it.  Since my father was wealthy, as his son, I was the welcome target of the kidnappers. 

To avoid the mishap, I stayed home most of the time.  But that did not make me lonely even staying home by myself.  Because of my father’s wealth, all the friends and relatives wanted to create good relationship they sent their children to play with me.  Their children were told to keep me company, to please me and not to offend me.  I was too young to understand the family politics but was pleased because of the unhealthy setup.  Because my parents wanted to keep me at home, they gave me all the toys money could buy which made not just me, also the other children, to play with the expensive toys which they might not afford to buy otherwise.

The walking continued.  My mind drifted to my teenage years.  When I looked through my life, the time between senior high school and college was the best time of my life, as yet.

I was now in high school.  With my parent’s ways to please me, thank God that I was not spoiled.  On the contrary I was rather successful in most subjects in high schools.

In mathematics, due to my own interests, I had been doing very well; not just well, I was on top of the class.  I remembered during the mathematics classes, the teacher constantly called me “assistant professor”.  It started when during the math class when one of the classmates asked how to solve some equations.  Rather the teacher was supposed to answer it, he pointed to me and said,

“Assistant Professor, you explained it to him.”

So I went to the blackboard, outlined the problems and answered his question.

So the news flew around and I got my new nickname.

Since mathematics was one of the three major subjects (mathematics, Chinese literature and English), some classmates asked me to give them private lessons after classes (more girls than boys – boys were shy to admit they needed help from another boy classmates; girls felt it was legitimate to request without giving up their dignity).  It made me popular among classmates.

Next was literature.  I loved to read since I was very young.  When we were in high school in the composition class, the teacher normally had five or six topics for us to select one as our homework each week.  I enjoyed writing, and I asked him if I would do all six of them, would he correct and comment on them as my way to learn?  I was lucky to have a good teacher who appreciated my effort and he accepted my request.

With reading, my extra assignment and his help, my writing improved fast.  In no time, I was the best in the composition class.  Each week the teacher chose and posted the best three compositions on board, and mine was one of them most of the times. 

After the articles posted on board for a week, it was taken down to make rooms for the new articles the following week.  As suggested by the teacher, the posted articles were circulated among the classmates to read.  Later I learned that some of them enjoyed the writing so much and they even took the manuscripts back home to show their parents or uncles.

Again because I enjoyed reading, I read tons and tons of books including science fictions and non-fictions.  It helped to increase my interests of learning and subsequently improving my knowledge and my grades in the science subjects.

After classes, I joined the chorus club and performed on stage and also the drama club and played a part on stage every semester.

All these added together earned me the respect from the fellow classmates.  My popularity soared and it helped me to make more and more friends.  On top of it, since my father was the part owner of a couple theaters and also the producer of numerous Cantonese movies, and with our close relationship with the movie stars, it helped to attract those who admired to meet their idols.

With these factors, I was automatically became the leader of the classmates, due to academic, environment and wealth influences.  When I looked back my life, it was obvious that the high school years were the busiest time periods of my social life.  It was too busy for me to handle, for sure I had never thought of the word “loneliness”.

So the walks continued.  I was deeper and deeper into my memory lane.

High school was over, and most classmates left the city to further their studies abroad.  Those who left behind were busy making a living.  So the social circle was reduced to very minimum.  Other than a handful of closest friends still hanged together, I had more free time to spend.  To avoid staying home alone and becoming a parasite, I went out to look for a job.  With the high unemployment in the city, I was lucky to be hired by the local government.  It took care the free time, but the job was so disappointing and I could not see any future if I decided to stay for the rest of my life.

“Am I going to be a government employee, getting a promotion or two with the salary barely sufficient for a minimum life style?”

The answer was obvious.  But how?  The only solution was to pursue further education, namely getting a college degree.  But my father already made it clear that he could not afford me going to college anywhere.  Decided not to give up without a fight, I started saving money from my low pay government job plus a couple side jobs coaching private high school students.  With the “experience” I had when I coached the fellow classmates, now I did that “professionally” to coach some high school students for money.

When I first learned and understood the family financial situation, it destroyed my hopes to move ahead, suddenly I felt so alone.  To find funding for four years in a foreign country was too big for a teenager to handle.  And I had nobody to turn to.  However, with the mind set to reach my goal, I had my plan which in turn made me so busy that I did not have time to feel alone.

With a few years of hard working, I finally managed to have the minimum funding to start my new life, and, hopefully my new future.  The minimum saving was so minimum that it took a lot of guts to leave my warm bed to the unknown territory thousands of miles away.  My mind told me: “facing the worst and hoping for the best, there is no unsolvable problem”.  

The hobby walk continued.

My life changed.  With the bared minimum funding I left home for college abroad.  Instead surrounded by family, relatives, friends, classmates, co-workers, suddenly I was all by myself.  With such a drastic change of life style, it was logical to feel lonely.  No.  It did not happen due to various reasons.

First, since I came to this country on a student visa, and I had to take a minimum of 12 semester units of courses to satisfy the Immigration Department requirements.  This was rather easy under the normal circumstance for an American student without language handicap.  But for me, since I graduated in a Chinese high school with English a minor subject, to take even twelve semester units was not an easy task.  Besides because my limited available money, I had to work close to full time to survive.

To make life more “exciting”, working with a student visa was not allowed.  But without working, where would I be able to pay for the tuition and living expenses?  Besides before I left home, I had promised my father solemnly that I would take care myself financially without burdening them before I got their blessing to let me go.  So in order to get what I had dreamed of, my college degree, the only solution was to work under stresses while find enough time to study the classes with the language I was not familiar with. 

Life was never boring and definitely not feeling loneliness.  Good news came alone and bad news came in pair.  The second year after I was in college, my father passed away.  With the possibility that my mom might ask me to return home to take over my father’s business, and that meant the end of my college career.  As in a Chinese family tradition, I could not defy my mom should she ask.  She had not asked yet.  The only better way was to get my college degree before her request.

So even it was not easy to carry 12 units, I changed my program to take 18 units, the maximum allowed by the Foreign Student Advisor.  With the double life of heavy work load and heavy study load, I was too stressful and too busy to feel lonely.  The life was exciting!  The word of “loneliness” was far in the horizon and never got even close to my mind.

So the walk continued and my life continued.

Believed or not, the impossible dream came true – I graduated in University of California, Berkeley and received my diploma.  I was still with the foreign student visa and I was supposed to leave for home.  But that was not the plan.  The unemployment was high back home while there were ample opportunities if I managed to stay in this country.  With luck and the help from the Kennedy Immigration Emergency Act, I received my legal resident status.  Now I was entering from the consumer/student world to the adult/job world.

The job world gave me unexpected surprises.  In my simple mind, I thought to maintain the status as a good worker was to work hard and put up good performance.  It turned out that having good performance was not only insufficient it might even backfire.

The first differences working in a firm in a foreign country was the word “foreign”.  Being a minority in a firm even they said no discrimination was only at face value.  Deep down it was always there, whether it affected my work life depended how I fought for myself.  Regardless whether you ended up winning or losing, it was unpleasant if I did not find way to protect myself.

Then the good performance would please your supervisors, but it would bring in jealousy from fellow workers.  The company politics was unavoidable.  Unless you did not mind to stay at the lowest level, keep working just to keep your paychecks, otherwise if you had a little ambition, other than working hard, you had to be a politician. 

I was either lucky or also learned how to protect myself, I, as an absolute necessity, found a “God father”.  To qualify to have the protection from the higher up, other than I had to have good achievements to benefit not just myself and also benefit the “God fathers”.  So it was the two way street to meet the minimum requirement to survive the job world.

Suddenly, thirty five years had gone by.  I reached my retirement age.  Because I was successful in work and career during the last twenty five years or more, I felt in love with my job.  I enjoyed working and watching the achievements.  It became not just a way to earn a living but an enjoyable hobby.  So when I reached retirement age, it made it so difficult to just hang up my glove and walk away.  Since there was no compulsory retirement age, I could have stayed in the job for the rest of my life should I want to.

I did a couple exercise/research to justify my retirement.  I did a financial analysis.  It indicated that even if I had no further income, and with the lifelong saving, I did not have to change my life style, such as changing the dinners from steaks to pork and beans.  The saving not only could maintain my current life style, it was sufficient for me to spend on other hobbies, such as travelling or purchasing anything with reasonable costs.

The second analysis was to list my hobbies, including those I was doing before retirement and those I wanted to do but had not the time to do it.  Surprisingly the list was long enough that I was sure that I would be busy yet enjoy life just the same or more.

So the retirement was justified.  If I would not give up the work I was enjoying, how could I find out if might enjoy life the same or more?

So the decision was made.

The walking continued and I was deeper and deeper in thoughts.

So I retired.  After saying goodbye to all the coworkers with the thirty five years friendship, I left.  The first morning was so strange!  After got up, had my breakfast, instead of left for work, I sat in the kitchen, relaxed and stared at the ceiling.  So I told myself, I had to break the habit and set up my new life style.

To assure keeping busy, I enrolled into a nearby community college.  Checking my hobby list I enrolled the class to learn how to paint.  I never had the talent to paint, any kind of media.  In fact, I could not even manage to do a simple sketch.  So I started to get into the very basic classes and went on to learn charcoal drawing, watercolor and pastel painting.  I was so excited to watch myself complete paintings with different media, well enough to show others.  It started as a challenge, and managed to have the results to my own satisfaction.

Then I went to another hobby, piano playing.  I loved music.  All along when I watched others sitting on the piano benches, and playing the melodies I loved.  I always envied them and decided that if I could do the same, or at least close enough to satisfy myself.

I was always a self-learner.  When I learned typing, I just borrowed a type writer, bought a self-taught book and started hitting the keyboard.  Suddenly I could type as fast as the professional typist.  When I learn computer programming, I bought an Atari computer, a self-taught book on programming, and started doing from the simple to more complicated computer programs.  Before I knew it, I was told from the company computer group that my programs had commercial quality.  I ended up doing computer programming in the company I worked for.

So when it got to piano playing, I decided I could try the self-taught at the beginning.  Even all others advised me that there was no way to learn piano without school, teacher and followed the proper procedure.  I vetoed that and I decided to develop my own method.  I only practice when I was alone.  This was to avoid criticism to disrupt doing my own way.

The results astonished others.  I could manage to play the major classical pieces sufficient to surprise them.  Would I have low ceiling to become a professional piano player as other criticized me?  Yes.  But to me that was not important.  I had never intended to become a professional player.  Had I been making tons of mistakes when playing?  Yes.  But if I could play well enough for my own enjoyment, that was what I was looking for.

Then I restarted my childhood hobby of stamp collecting.  I had fun when I was a teenager, and was disrupted when I started working.  Now after the retired, time became immaterial.  So it was the best time to restart this hobby again.

After retired, I was so excited when I first restart from scratch.  I went to stamp collector shops, purchased large packages of stamps as what I did before.  With the collection and the duplicates, suddenly I was not only doing collection myself, I started selling stamp as a non-professional stamp dealer.

I was a decent writer when I was in high school.  I just enjoyed the moment of writing.  Also I loved computers.  With this combination, I started writing again, both in Chinese and English, and created my website to publish my own articles.  To make the website more meaningful, my first website was to promote the Chinese culture.  That included the Chinese festivals, Chinese traditions, Chinese cooking and other subjects.

In order to assure the accuracy, I spent time to do thorough research.  The research and the writing not only keeping me busy, it brought satisfaction to watch my own websites went public.

Furthermore other hobbies such as reading, financial analysis and others kept me so busy that I was glad that I had made the right decision to retire.  I was so content that my retirement life was so enjoyable that it would last forever. 

The walk continued and I must have stepped on a stone, I almost tripped over while the walking had been so level and smooth as my life had been. 

While I had been having fun of life, then something I had never thought of but in reality it had been happening: I was getting old.

All along I felt secure financially that it would last the distance and had sufficient hobbies to fill up the free time.  I thought no doubt the good life could last forever.  Why not!  I was still in good health.  The last cruise when I travelled from Berlin, Germany, then spent the next five days in the ship stopped by several cities along the river in Germany and ended up in Czech Republic.  Just like all the previous travels, I joined the excursions and I walked substantially and did not feel tired.  So there was no reason for me to think about my health and aging.  Not until others reminded me.

The health issued was popped up like the jack in the box.  Though I never thought of it but it did exist.  I suddenly realized that nobody would last forever.  I looked around the friends and classmates of my age group which I had never paid much attention to it.  Some were having major or minor health problems.  Even though I was still feeling healthy, I have to accept that when we aged, there was no guarantee that the health remained good forever.  Would my health go downhill soon?  How soon, next week, next month, next year?  Especially I had a few heart procedures done thirty years ago.  Though the last thirty years, I felt good, healthy and cured.  But feeling was deceiving especially that we understood that heart problems, as soon as it existed in your system, there were no such thing as completely cure.  Control, manage maybe, but not complete healthy.

So after I was reminded that I had to take care of the potential health problems.   If I ignored them, the burden would not be on me, but on those around me and cared for me.  So as soon as the issue was mentioned I have no ground to overlook it.

Retirement community was mentioned. Other than the additional expenses the setup seemed convenient and comfortable.  The retirement home included whatever facilities you could think of.  They included exercise gym, swimming pool, computer room, game room, and dining room with one dinner included, and more.  If we moved in, I would not need to worry about even the house maintenance.  I could just sit back and relax, watch television, read books,  or do whatever I wanted, or, even, do nothing.  Would that sound heavenly!?

When it was suggested, it was not whether the choice was good or bad, it was the only choice!  So the decision was made.  First I had to give up the house I had been living most of my life.  Then I had to downsize to a smaller apartment decent, comfortable and affordable.  The life style would have to change completely fit into the new environment.

Sure I could and should carry some hobbies with me to keep busy.  For instance, if I could not take the accessories of all the painting media to my new world, I could narrow down to just pastel and Chinese brush painting to minimize the moving.  Then I could keep all the computers since I enjoyed them the most.  Stamp collecting had been my life long enjoyment, even though I had not done much recently, it would not make sense to give it up.

With the sensible consolidation I narrowed down my hobbies for the big move yet they would be, hopefully, sufficient to entertain myself in my new world.  Life would change, but with these preparations, I should be able to keep life meaningful like the last twenty years since I retired.  Besides I would be moving closer to my children and their families, it would be something to spend my time and look forward to.

So we moved.  I suddenly realized that I had look at the small picture and did not think of the big picture without taking in consideration of the environment I would move into.

After I moved in, I rejected it immediately.  I had never in my life seen so many wheel chairs and walkers around me.  When I watched movies with the scenes of disabled persons or those with wheel chairs, I had to walk away to avoid the scenes.  Not that I had anything against wheel chairs, on the contrary,  I sympathized at them.  It was just the unpleasant scenes I tried to avoid.  Even though I admitted that there was a good chance that I would end up as one of them, still before I reached that stage, even I might be in denial, I refused to visualize myself in it.  With them around me every day I could not help to feel old, older than I want to be.

This move was drastic, too drastic.  In fact, one of the major reasons was to be closer to my children.  This was still valid.  In fact, how the children appreciated me was beyond my expectations.  Still, I in fact walked away from my social circle, walked away from the local friends who I had been together for the last thirty five years.  Other than a couple old classmates in the new city, I had to rebuild my new social circle from scratch.

This did not sound like any problems at all.  I went to cruises many times.  After I walked into the ship, I understood that if I would avoid being alone, I needed new friends during the voyage.  I had never had problems meeting strangers.  As soon as I stepped into the ship, I made new friends almost immediately.  I could build the small social circles in no time.  Since most of the residents in the retirement home were very friendly, it did not seem like a big task to make new friends.  Unfortunately, one factor I did not consider in the thinking process, the friendly retirement residents were mostly in the wheel chairs, the scenes I tried so hard to avoid.  Now I was in the middle of it so building up my new social circle would not be as easy and natural as what I would expect.

But I also understood I did not have too many alternatives other than staying in the retirement home.  So I really did not have any choices but trying to get used to the environment.  So if I would have to put in my own effort to build up a limited social circle, still, additionally, my hobbies could keep me busy as they did when I just retired.  When I first retired, I faced the similar drastic change.  Rather than with the coworkers every day, I was alone at home.  It was true. With the careful planning before I retired, the projects carried out made me busy.  If I could do it then, I should not have problems doing it now.

When I moved, since I had to give up part of my belonging in order to fit into a smaller apartment and that included some of my hobbies I had been doing.  Still I had moved some I enjoyed doing.  So I should be able to use them to improve my life style to raise my spirit.  Even if I could not enlarge my social circle as what I did in the cruise, at least I should be well when I was alone, alone inside my own apartment.  Even in my mind, I understood that the solution was not desirable, but at least I would survive until I might find a better solution.

So I resumed playing piano; I resumed writing articles to maintain my old website and started a new one; I prepared to restart stamp collecting and painting.  Now with these old hobbies I had during the years as soon as I retired, I expected that I would regain the momentum to evade the loneness and had the exciting life as I used to have.

The plans were carried out successfully.  Somehow something unforeseen I had not factored in.  I did not have the enthusiasm at this time!!  Then I understood the differences.  At the time when I retired, I was so anxious to do what I had been meaning to prove myself.  I tried to show I could learn to play piano self-taught even I had never touched the piano keys before.  I tried to create painting of different media while I did not even know how to do a simple sketch.  The part of satisfaction was not the final products, but to prove myself that I could fulfil my wishes should I put my heart into it.

And now, it was different.  I was not proving anything while doing it; I was doing it just because I had too much free time.  So the enthusiasm was not there!  Suddenly I felt so disappointed.  With a couple hundred residents in the building, with all the helpers so friendly, I felt alone.  I mentioned at the beginning of this article about the person in the New York subway station surrounded by over a hundred persons and felt alone.  Now I had the same feeling.  If I could not merge myself into the environment of the retirement house, no matter how many persons around me, I would still feel alone.

The disappointment did not stop there.  The retirement house included one meal.  I was not so keen to have only American dishes as what they were serving.  I loved cooking.  So I thought I could kill two birds with one stone.  Cooking could become one of my hobbies and I could create my favorite Cantonese dishes for lunch.

I got another surprise.  Obviously the kitchen was setup for elder residents not to do any serious cooking.  The kitchen was so open that even boiling a bigger pot of water would trigger the smoke alarm.  So not only it destroyed my hobby, I could not even have the chance to create a decent meal, lunches or dinners.

When it rained, it poured.  My cataract surgery on my left eye was not successful.  Until I would find ways to solve the problem, I gave up driving.  I did not realize giving up driving would cause such impact.  I thought that it would be so restful just sitting in the car.  And I did not consider depending on other, even though she was so willingly without any complaints, would cause me because of losing my independency. 

I had never missed the independency so much until I did not have it.  It just like almost everything else, when you had it you took it for granted.  Just a simple example.  I loved cooking.  When one simple ingredient was missing when I tried to cook my favorite dish, I would jump into the car, drove a few miles away to the nearby store.  Minutes later, I was back to my kitchen and preparing my creation.  And now, even I was so lucky that she would drive me anytime I wished, still after a few times, I could not help to feel so guilty that I was building my convenience over her inconvenience.  So I ended up asking frequently “when you might have the chance to go to the Chinese grocery store?”  How different! 

With all these disappointments, I was looking for help.  But where?  There were no one could help to solve my personal problem; I had to solve it myself or I had to get used to it.

The feeling was lonely when there were no shoulders to lean on!  I was all by myself!

I was back to the retirement home after completed the walk.  The walk was nice, peaceful around the landscaped flowery sidewalks. and I had wonderful time to think the last eighty plus years of life, good or bad.  As the good old Chinese saying, “life is a dream and dream is like smoke”.  Life is like a dream, it is not real.  When one wake up, the dream is like smoke; it will fade away.

Walk was completed.  Hope life would go on without fading away.

There were always hopes.

[August 2022]