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]
