By: Natasha Brown
Genre: Literally fiction
Page Count: 76, e-book
‘Our solitude is willed’ says the founder of The School of
Life, Alain de Botton. While it may be
true for the occasions when we choose to take a break from the world, its
people, and its inexhaustible busyness, at other times, when the world excludes
us, that is, when we find ourselves utterly alone with no one to bring into
company or no activity to engage in and unburden the weight of time, such
alone-ness is no longer willed. Our solitude turns into isolation; willingness into
coercion.
As an introvert, I’ve immensely enjoyed the spaciousness of my solitude,
and since I’ve been lonely for most of my life, I’ve also grown accustomed to
it. Yet my increasing consciousness about how often I find myself to be lonely,
even though I wouldn’t particularly love to be around people either, (the
conundrum of loneliness) have made me grow distasteful, even frustrated,
towards such prolonged spells of solitude, or rather isolation. For every now
and then, on the evidence of my life, I don’t find my solitude to be willed,
but rather an isolation that is enforced upon me – by luck, by my personality,
by my being too different and uncomplying.
Due to my ‘conundrum of loneliness’,
I’m someone who makes for a perfect example of ‘man isn’t happy in any
situation’ proverb. I do not want to be with myself for too long, I do not want
to be alone, yet at the same time, I wouldn’t want to be around other people
either. I don’t want an un-willed solitude, and I cannot opt for a willed
company either.
But only a couple of weeks of work has made me realize that
such trivial displeasures about life are the ponderings of the adolescent, once
one crosses his mid-twenties and has to become a moving part in the machine of
capitalism, more existential and significant-seeming concerns emerge. Like realizing
how this is going to be your life for the next twenty-five years, and fearing
to be stuck in a job that doesn’t at all bring you any fulfillment whatsoever,
but only the money that you need.
Standing here now, not only do I find myself
at a distance from my narrative of loneliness, but also from everything in that
narrative that created a meaning out of it, or at least a meaning in
development. And a core part of that narrative of loneliness was reading, and
should I exaggerate, writing too. Now, I just feel like another one of billions
of workers who don’t feel any meaning towards their work, therefore no sense of
fulfillment either, but has to work in order to earn the important money on
which their life depends.
Work that is inexhaustible: every other day, six days
a week, 9 hours a day; work which treats our life outside it only as an
interlude. Since by working you are earning the money you so need; the rest
doesn’t really matter. I guess ‘the work life balance’ was a fluke after all.
But
it’s too early for me to be talking all these, instead I should be reviewing
this book, which due to my work, wasn’t the savoring experience of reading as it
should’ve been.
The first-person narrator of this novella isn’t at all what I’ve
discussed so far: an introverted loner or a compelled capitalist laborer. She
is a black British woman who works as an accountant at a well-paid job, and is
fretful about her upcoming visit with her boyfriend’s rich, white parents. In these
seventy pages, Brown takes us inside the narrator’s soliloquies (likened to
Virginia Woolf) as she takes into account her colonized past, her never-ending struggle,
and the living elements of British imperialism that still haunts her, despite
her position, or maybe, because of it. Brown’s prose isn’t only sharp with its
satire, but is tender also with the vulnerabilities of the narrator. Moreover,
any Woolf reader would feel the elements of ‘stream of consciousness’ in Brown’s
prose as well, making it even more impactful as book, however small.
Ratings: 4.5/5 **** March 11, 2022_