Being alone isn’t always a bad thing.

There is no doubt that there are people in the world who are lonely, for a variety of reasons. They may have lost a loved one or might not have any friends or relatives living nearby. They may be living in rural and remote areas where callers are rare. For those people, life presents certain challenges.

Living in isolation can be difficult and the days must be very long if you are a person that craves company. Some studies have suggested that apart from being just inconvenient, loneliness can also be unhealthy and has been linked to heart disease, insomnia and depression. It can also lead to an early death.

Solving the loneliness problem is not a simple matter. Telling lonely people that they ought to get out more often and meet people is a little bit like telling someone who is afraid of bats that they should try living in a cave.

It’s not that straight forward. It seems to imply that it’s their fault that they’re lonely but for those who never recover from a bereavement, that kind of loneliness never leaves.

Having said that, solitude is a welcome way of life for certain people and they are perfectly happy with their own company. There are times when I am like that and sometimes all I need is a good book or my laptop and I’m happy. I love the peace and quiet.

I was having a pint in my local pub one day when I started chatting with the guy sitting next to me. I had never seen him before. He told me that he was living in Cork City and that his wife had died and he was now living alone. He took the train from Cork as far as Carrigaloe and then walked the rest of the way into Cobh which took him about an hour.

He spent the next few hours walking around the town before going for his lunch. Later he went for a pint and his plan was to get the train back to the city when he finished his drink and then he would get the bus back home.

This was his daily routine. He had free travel, so he would head off on the bus in the morning and make his way into town. Then he would look at the bus timetable or he would go to the railway station and check the time table there. At that stage, he would decide where he was going to go for the day and he could end up anywhere, depending on his humour.

I think this character has a fantastic attitude to life and he loves to get out every day and meet new people. On the other hand, solitude suits others and when they go for a pint, they prefer to sit in the corner and mind their own business and that’s fine too. To each his own.

One guy who can deal with solitude is Enda O’Coineen. He’s an Irish sailor who found himself stranded on the other side of the world after being forced out of a solo round-the-world race. He had spent 62 days on his own at sea, in the middle of nowhere, when he suffered an accident and had to bow out of the race. He was rescued by a fishing trawler and was towed into port.

This 60-year-old entrepreneur from Galway had been drifting for several days after a squall in the Southern Ocean broke the mast on his 60ft racing yacht. He was on track to be the first Irish sailor to go single-handed around the world.
Despite his ordeal, Enda wants to go back to where he was picked up so he can finish his travels. It takes some willpower and determination to endure something like that and you need to be sure you can survive without company.

There is another type of loneliness too. The kind that hits you when a loved one emigrates and loses contact with home. I was told a story recently and I’m not sure how true it is but I’ll tell it again anyway.

There was a guy in a small village, I won’t say where, who was having a going away party before he headed off to Australia. A little old lady from the village approached him and asked him to tell her son Paddy that she loved him. He didn’t want to disappoint her by telling her that the chances of him finding Paddy in a country of that size were probably zero, so he just agreed to pass on the message.

He was in Oz for a few years and one day he was working on a pipeline when he got chatting to the foreman. The foreman told him that there was another Irish guy working at the next station and he would arrange a meeting on the next visit. When he came back the next time he met the other Irish guy who turned out to be the missing Paddy from his home village. He passed on the message from his mother and asked Paddy why he hadn’t kept in contact.

Paddy said that he could never return because of the terrible thing that he had done to his parents. He told the story of how he was out one night in the village and he borrowed his father’s car. He was acting the goat and he wrote off the car in an accident. After that, he was so ashamed of himself that he couldn’t face his parents so he decided, there and then, to leave home.

He subsequently ended up in Australia and sent a message home that he was alright and then he cut himself off from his family. All because of a broken car.