I see them everywhere. Sitting in cafes and talking to each other. They are always together, always crowded, heads 30 centimeters apart, exchanging opinions, ideas, jokes, stories, experiences. It is terrible.
Human meetings are a strange concept. I mean, I don’t understand why anyone would bother to dress, walk, travel, arrive, pay, to do what they can do in a phone call or email, or just avoid it? Why rub shoulders with the human race if you can avoid it? I, personally, do everything to meet people as little as possible. It’s not that I hate people, I just don’t like meeting them. face to face. Like Eric Einstein, who in his death commanded us misanthropy, I also like to be at home. I don’t go as far as Jean-Paul Sartre, who told us that “hell is the other”, I, for me, the other is simply something that is better to avoid as long as you can.
The day I realized this was when I was younger and first read The Catcher in the Rye. The hero of the book, Holden Caulfield, says there that “one day I will build myself a cabin in the middle of the woods and live in it for the rest of my life.” Until that happens, he offers a very interesting plan of action. “What I thought of doing,” he says in the book, “is to do myself as if I were one of those deaf-mutes.
So I won’t have to have unnecessary stupid conversations with anyone.” I remember how I sat and read it for the first time and felt that I had found a partner in a whole worldview that I still did not know how to articulate. Holden Caulfield helped me articulate what I felt all my life – that conversations with people are an event which consists of a lot of information that is neither necessary nor important and that KKL-Junk did not just build a lot of forests in Israel – it is so that we can build cabins in them.
When I read this at the time, the world was not yet that sophisticated and did not give you the amazing possibilities that you have today when you can transfer and receive funds in Bit and thus avoid a physical meeting with the transferors, and you can also write “Congratulations” on this or that person’s wall on Facebook in a day His birth and thereby getting rid of the danger involved in picking up the phone which could end up with the chilling question: “So when are we meeting?”.
Five years ago, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time, Theresa May, decided to establish a new ministry in the government, the Ministry of Loneliness, which will be headed by a Minister for Loneliness Affairs. She appointed Tracy Crouch from the Conservative Party to the position. For a long time I think about the fact that I am a proud British citizen (on my mother’s side) and actually, who is more suitable for the job than me? I was born to fill this role. I am already working on a letter that I will send to the British Prime Minister in which I will inform him that the most suitable person for this position has been found – me.
“Prime Minister, Hello”, I am going to write in the letter, “My name is Lior Dayan and I am addressing you because I believe that I am the person you should appoint to head the Ministry of Loneliness.” Although I am a wizard of self-hatred, I like to be alone. This is of course a paradox that cannot be explained with logical tools. But loneliness has no logic and no rules. This is the first thing to know about loneliness.
The second thing you need to know is that loneliness is like a wave in the sea and there is no point in rowing against it, you need to know how to “climb” it and ride it. Once you know how to surf the solitude, there is no better experience than this. And I am an experienced and highly experienced loneliness surfer, I know how to brew loneliness and turn it into a different experience that will make even the single person in Israel feel different. I promise you that I can help the subjects of the kingdom understand that there is a blessing in solitude and that solitude is not an enemy. I look forward to the appointment, which I will do in the best and most professional way.”
And I can already see how I will get – alone of course – to my swearing-in ceremony as the Minister of Loneliness in the British government. I will go on stage and give a long speech about loneliness and loneliness. I will end the speech with the words of the American band:
This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don’t give up
Until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky