What are you like when you're alone?

In Life the other day, Teo Pau Lin wrote about not being to live with TV, or to be more precise, not being able to be alone for long periods of time without starting to feel antsy. So, what are you like when you're alone?

Agathe Christie, when she wrote using the alias Mary Westmacott, explored thid idea in one of her novels. Can't remember the name of the novel though (old age setting in!) Set in the times of old choo-choo trains, this middle-aged lady was supposed to travel from India back to England, and because of some train accident, she was marooned in the middle of nowhere for weeks, with no one but herself for company.

Being a normal human being like any of us, she set about finding things for herself to do. She read all the books she had on hand. She tried talking to the people around her, but she was obviously too boring to talk to, so they pretended to speak another language. ;p She wrote letters to everybody who probably hated the pompousness of her letters. She did everythng that she could possibly do, until she was left with nothing but her thoughts.

She had nothing but her thoughts. And there were only so many shallow superficial and entertaining thoughts one can think. And her thoughts sooned turned deeper, and into herself. All the things that have been pushed away on the pretext of 'busyness' all re-surfaced. She had been so busy getting herself involved in charities and activities and dinner parties, she never had the time to think. And now she had more than enough time on her hands to think. And she didn't like the things that she thought about.

All the time she thought she had been such a great mother to her children, she was actually a selfish manipulative mother who indirectly pushed her children out of the home with her bullying and her trying to control their lives. All the signs were there. But she refused to see them, much lest think about them. The husband who loved her so much, saw her change before his very eyes, from a warm-hearted and kind girl, into a controlling woman whom he couldn't love anymore. He was now in love with someone else, but he had too much principles to abandon his first love for his true love.

For the first time in her life, she finally could see herself for what she really is. She wanted to change, but at the end of the story, when she returned home, she slipped back again to her state of purposeful ignorance. It was too much to admit her faults and start all over again.

If I was stuck on a deserted island with nothing but my own thoughts, will I like what I find out about myself? Is my life so full of things happening that I have no time to think? Am I inexorably caught up in such a whirlpool of activities that I am even engaged in things I don't even like doing, with people I don't even like? Do I have time to stop, and stand and stare? Am I truly living my life, or am I just being pushed forward by the things and people around me?

Dare I face the truth of the questions I just asked? Am I willing to change or will I just continue letting myself be sucked into the abyss?