The End of Loneliness

by Benedict Wells

I’ve known Death a long time, but now Death knows me.

What is it that makes a life into what it becomes?

‘Moon River’

Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style some day. Oh, dream maker, you heartbreaker, wherever you’re going I’m going your way.

The fact that I was on a planet hurtling through space at phenomenal speed seemed just as terrifying to me as the new, disturbing thought that death was inevitable.

Before us great Death stands Our fate held close within his quiet hands

‘He said it was important to have a true friend – a soulmate. Someone you’d never lose, who would

always be there for you. He said that was much more important than love.’

And now here we were, sitting at the table like three actors meeting again after a long time who can no longer remember the script of their most famous play.

but ultimately all my relationships since school

difficult childhood is like an invisible enemy, I thought. You never know when it will strike.

why do you so often long for solitude in company when you can scarcely bear to be alone any more?

‘Yes, but the antidote to loneliness isn’t just being around random people indiscriminately, the antidote to loneliness is emotional security.’

‘You have to finally forget the past. Do you know how many people had it worse than we did? Your childhood, our parents’ death, are not your fault. What is your fault is what these things are doing to you. You alone are responsible for yourself and your life. And if you just do what you’ve always done, you’ll just get what you’ve always got.’

mean, if you spend all your life running in the wrong direction, could it be the right one after all?’

‘So you know that feeling,’ I said calmly, ‘when life has been poisoned by something, right from the start. Like black liquid poured into a basin of clean water.’

Time isn’t linear; nor is memory. You always remember more clearly things you’re emotionally close to at any given moment.

‘The question is, what wouldn’t be different? What would be the immutable part of you? The bit that would stay the same in every life, no matter what course it took. Are there

elements in us that survive everything?’ ‘And?’

‘To find your true self you need to question everything you encountered at birth. And lose some of it, too, because often it’s only in pain that we discover what really belongs to us … It’s in the breaches that we recognize ourselves.’

Life is not a zero-sum game. It owes us nothing, and things just happen the way they do. Sometimes they’re fair and everything makes sense; sometimes they’re so unfair we question everything. I pulled the mask off the face of Fate, and all I found beneath it was chance.

God wants us to learn to look after ourselves. He doesn’t give us the fish and hear all our prayers, but He listens to us and observes how

we

cope with everything down here – sickness, injustice, death and suffering. Life is there in o...

What if there’s no such thing as time? If everything we experience is eternal, and it’s not time that passes us by, but we ourselves that pass by the things we experience?

It would mean that while our perspective would change and we would distance ourselves from treasured memories, they would still be there, and if we could go back we would still find them in the same place.

Death is the opposite of unreality,

Memory, the last refuge of the dead.