Single, Couples

Single, Couples

    We shared dinner the other night with our friends, the ones who had recently completed their trek on the Camino de Santiago; and while they went as a couple (actually, they had an additional friend tag along making them a threesome), his main advice was that if you were going to do this hike then the best thing was to do it alone.  Since this was his second trip (doing half of the trek the first time by himself and now completing the second half with his wife and friend), he could speak from experience.  But his main point was that he is still in almost daily contact with people he met from the solo experience, and likely will have limited (if any) contact with those from this recent trip.  "You see," he told me, "when you're hiking with someone or with others, people don't bother you, they don't come up to you.  But when you're alone, you meet all sorts of others."  It got me thinking, for on some of my own solo adventures (admittedly I was younger and unmarried), I bumped into many an adventurer, and indeed, they had also become fast friends, perhaps not daily contacts but now some 30 years later, we're still writing to one another, sometimes even popping in for that rare visit.  But as a couple, my wife and I have met many people, and other than a few pleasantries of "stay in touch" or "when you're out our way..." the communication has basically died away.  Why is that?

    One can liken something similar at different points in one's life, the age groups dividing away from one another, the single person fading away from the married friends, the married-without-children people fading away from the friends now laden with kids; for us, even the retired lifestyle seems to separate us from those still working.  Is it a lack of commonality, what was once shared simply is no longer?  It's a bit like being trapped in life's elevator, the odd collection of strangers suddenly together for an unknown reason --a cruise, a convention, a retreat, even a disaster-- and the common purpose being one of vagueness; there's is some common theme (you're all here) but the reasons for such are all over the map.  And sometimes as exciting or scary as that may be at the time, the moment begins to fade once you're rescued or "normal" life and routine returns.  So what does make solo travel seemingly so much more meaningful...or is that really true at all? 

    Part of this gave me pause, for the two are quite different, the people you meet as a couple are generally quite distinct from those you would meet as a solo person; for myself, my conversations while solo are quite different, my openness and curiosity more piqued to discover the inner sanctum of this person just as I can feel their personality scanning me as well (me with a nuclear engineer from Russia...pshaw, but as we hiked together, each of us solo, we became fast friends).  And as with both encounters of meeting solo and meeting as a couple, some meetings work and others don't.  It seems to me that as a couple, one is a bit more guarded as if trying to fit two peas in a pod, so to speak.  You are now speaking for two and perhaps being viewed as such.  It's not less interesting or more interesting, just a different path and perhaps one that would not have been revealed had you been by yourself.  But for me, weighed out, I would have to agree with my friend that when traveling, I've likely made more longer-lasting friendships solo than I have when traveling with my wife.  So did this mean that I was a misfit?  A miss fit?

    If you haven't heard of Lidia Yuknavitch now's a good time to meet her.  Her TED Talk is not only inspiring but insightful as well...and look at her path: former alcoholic, once homeless, mother who lost her child on birth, escapee of an abusive childhood, author and winner of numerous literary awards...and a self-declared person who doesn't fit in: Misfit people -- we don't always know how to hope or say yes or choose the big thing, even when it's right in front of us.  It's a shame we carry. It's the shame of wanting something good.  It's the shame of feeling something good.  It's the shame of not really believing we deserve to be in the room with the people we admire.  Returning home after a gala celebration of her writing where she met book publishers and other authors and agents wanting to sign her (she didn't accept any of them), she adds: ...at home in the dark, back in my underwear, I could still hear their voices.  They said, "Don't listen to anyone who tries to get you to shut up or change your story."  They said, "Give voice to the story only you know how to tell."  They said, "Sometimes telling the story is the thing that saves your life."

    Perhaps that was the difference, if there even was a difference, that of just listening, not only to others but to yourself; was --is-- there a connection, even with yourself?  How much of what is being said is fluff and how much do you want to retain and expand and develop?  Perhaps the difference in meeting people solo and meeting them as a couple is really no difference, that it is just a matter of does it click for one or two or three or four?  The matching might simply be easier with two?  Who knows?  But author Yuknavitch concluded with this thought: There's a myth in most cultures about following your dreams.  It's called the hero's journey.  But I prefer a different myth, that's slightly to the side of that or underneath it.  It's called the misfit's myth.  And it goes like this: even at the moment of your failure, right then, you are beautiful.  You don't know it yet, but you have the ability to reinvent yourself endlessly.  That's your beauty...You can be a drunk, you can be a survivor of abuse, you can be an ex-con, you can be a homeless person, you can lose all your money or your job or your husband or your wife, or the worst thing of all, a child.  You can even lose your marbles.  You can be standing dead center in the middle of your failure and still, I'm only here to tell you, you are so beautiful.  Your story deserves to be heard, because you, you rare and phenomenal misfit, you new species, are the only one in the room who can tell the story the way only you would.  Watch her talk...watch yours.