7/5/2023 0 Comments When i m alone with you![]() They then send out a spotter plane or a truck to check it out. When I see smoke, I plot it on the map and radio in the coordinates to the office. I use binoculars, or just my eyes, to spot fires during the bushfire season. There are windows all around and I can see miles and miles of forested hills – on a clear day, I can see the Stirling Range 145km away. So what’s the art of being alone? I asked five people who love nothing more.Įrica Buist ‘I enjoy having the freedom to dream’: Sarah Drummond, fire tower officer, 48, Western AustraliaĮvery weekday morning I climb Mount Frankland to a tower at the granite peak. We should be listening to people who enjoy aloneness more, and not assume they’re mad or somehow selfish.”įor some, solitude is the ultimate prize, the key to happiness. Living in a rural village 70 miles away from the nearest railway station, Maitland says people feel sorry for her because she never goes to any parties. There is also, says Maitland, “something weird” about a culture that encourages high self-esteem yet discourages us from spending time with the person we ought to like best. We’re depriving them of the skills for being alone.” We tell them, ‘don’t fight, say thank you, share your toys… ’, we send them to playgroup. “Everybody says it is natural for the human species to be social,” she says, “yet we put enormous amounts of effort into training our children to be sociable. “An epidemic means an infectious disease, which is inaccurate and stigmatising.” Rather, Maitland believes we are “underskilled” when it comes to being by ourselves, and that we were deprived of those skills as children. ![]() And while over 9 million adults in Britain say they are often or always lonely, she doesn’t believe we have, as scientists say, a loneliness epidemic. But loneliness is simply being alone and not liking it, says Maitland. ![]()
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