It’s not very intuitive to define what is a merry loner. After all, loners get a bad rap. Too often, people consider them synonymous with outcasts. Misfits. Anti-social weirdos.
I disagree. I’ve always been a loner—and a pretty merry one at that.
Let me paint you a picture: A Merry Loner in the wild.
I remember one day in high school. (Don’t worry—this is not some tragic story.)
It was lunchtime, and it was that day of the week when my lunch period didn’t line up with any of my friends’. Across the cafeteria, there was another group of girls whom I didn’t know very well sitting together at a table. If I wanted to, I knew they definitely would have been nice enough to let me sit with them.
But I didn’t feel like it. After all, why engage in awkward high school small talk and pleasantries when I could actually enjoy myself?
So I didn’t.
Instead, I found myself a cozy bench seat in the corner by the window, opened my Tupperware of frozen-but-now-thawed shrimp cocktail, and dug my nose into the latest issue of InStyle magazine (my beloved monthly subscription that I normally reserved for perusal during physics class).
The heigh of luxury, eh?
That is, until someone came over and threw off my groove. And to fit with the high school thematics, of course it was some pesky underclassman. At the time, I was a senior, so I was surprised when what looked like some sophomore boy came up to me and sat down on the bench next to me.
“Hey, what’s up?” He said with a big smile.
I looked over the pages of InStyle. A two-page spread of this fall’s best buttery-leather and suede boots. (This was in the 2010s when heeled booties reigned supreme.) Important stuff.
“Why are you sitting alone?” He asked with what looked like genuine concern, leaning forward.
Oh, I realized what was happening.
“Oh, thanks.” I gave a quick smile back. “I’m okay, just enjoying reading my magazine with my lunch.”
I gestured to the glossy pages—but he didn’t take the hint.
“You can come sit with us,” he offered cheerily, beckoning to a group of other probably very nice youngsters across the room.
My heart sank.
What a sweet kid. He was doing the right thing. He was trying to be kind and look out for the school’s lonely and forgotten.
Except he got the situation all wrong.
I just wanted to enjoy my shrimp and my vapid articles about exfoliating and finding the best dry shampoo in as much peace as I could in the measly 25 minutes we got for lunch.
This is what the others fundamentally don’t understand.
By the others, I mean those who don’t know how to be alone. For example:
- When they see someone sitting alone … They see a lonely loser.
- When they see someone who’s actually at peace with silence instead of needing to fill the space with inane chatter to the closest person in earshot … They see a social outcast.
- When they see someone fifth-wheeling at the party because they’d rather fly solo than date someone they don’t like just for the sake of not being single … They see a loner.
I don’t see it like that.
I see someone who’s comfortable with themselves, calm, and capable of fulfilling their own needs. Or, as the kids say, “living their best life.”
A Merry Loner is someone who knows there is nothing to fear in being alone.
A Merry Loner is neither anti-social nor self-important. Her goal is not to be alone all the time. (That wouldn’t be any fun, would it?) And she doesn’t enjoy spending time by herself because she thinks she’s so great. In fact, sometimes it’s very much the opposite!
Sometimes she really doesn’t like herself. Sometimes she moderately likes herself. Sometimes she’s even proud of herself. And sometimes she thinks she’s terribly ignorant and oblivious and everyone but her has managed to figure out what to do in life.
But through it all, she is herself.
While friends can say good-bye after a coffee date, family can live on the other side of the country or the world, and even a partner can go in the other room for a while, The Merry Loner is stuck with herself.
And guess what? The same goes for you, too.
Because no matter how many friends we may have (close, superficial, or imaginary), no matter how often we talk to our families (frequently, rarely, or way too often), and no matter what our relationship status is (committed, confused, or codependent), we’re all really on our own.
We will always be loners. Merry Loners are the ones who know how to embrace it.
We should all be Merry Loners.
This is my mission: to change the idea of what it means to be a loner—from misfit outcast to confident, content individual.
Sometimes, we all need a reminder that being alone isn’t bad. It isn’t something foisted upon us from which we are always desperately trying to escape. Sometimes we choose it—nay, even seek it out.
Because it’s in those moments when we are alone that we can contemplate, create, and catalyze change to make life better. Like better health! A better mind! A better self! And better travel!
So let’s each go on our merry way.
Onward and upward,
Merry
