The company you keep

A very long time ago, when I still worked in hospitals, I used to come across that occasional patient who had absolutely no one to come and see him or her. Despite having a wonderful disposition and exuding a sense of peace and appreciation. Puzzling, I know. I used to think what could this person possibly have done, that no one was willing or able to visit them in the hospital?

Now, there were quite a few who had family, but the family was far away and it just wouldn’t be worth it to disrupt the family members living for a non-emergency. More an inconvenience. You know? But they would have come if left under the impression that important decisions would have to be made. And there were others, who were so entangled in their own twisted view of life and of themselves. Still so caught up in their victim mentality and therefore their false sense of entitlement that they did manage to estrange themselves from their family members in such a way that these family members wouldn’t want to come around just to keep their own sanity. Having had to make peace with the fact that this person had such a total lack of personal insight into how their behavior affected and still affects everyone around them. Actually, there were plenty of those sort of people around.

But I am talking about the person here who had no one to come see them because THEY were actually the ones having made peace with every one, family member or not, no matter what they had done in life or no matter their circumstances. They had arrived at that rare place where one is totally fine with being alone. Not because alone is something that they necessarily desired. But being alone was better than compromising themselves for the sake of others company. Or for the sake of keeping a false peace that was not theirs for the keeping, rather the other parties involved should have made the effort to seek the peace. Get it?

They had a such an aura of serenity that totally enveloped them. Every interaction with anyone was done with a deep sense of appreciation for the presence of the other. So it wasn’t that they had done anything to drive people away. No, they had come to terms with the fact that one can meet people only on the level that they are at and the majority of us are really not on that level yet of appreciating each other’s presence for what it is.