by Nikki Albert

Created on: December 14, 2010

I am a hermit. I think I have always yearned for the hermit lifestyle. As a teenager I always felt so out of synch with the rest of my peers. They craved attention, I abhorred it. They wanted to be popular, I wanted to be left alone. They gossiped, while I wanted to have meaningful conversations. They threw themselves into activities without thinking about the consequences, while I pondered those consequences and then chose which activity I would engage in. That is not to say I did not live fully and completely. That I did not immerse myself in the world, find my limits and test those limits. I did. And found the world lacking. Whatever the world had to offer I was always more comfortable in my own mind and in my own presence. The world seemed like a trap destined to suck the life right out of me. Indeed, a few times it came quite close to that.

Ever since I was a child I loved to read. More I loved to consume books like I needed to breath. In those books were worlds unlike the real world and therefore more attractive by far. Reading to me was a form of escapism. It led to a thirst for knowledge. And what would a budding hermit take in university if not philosophy? I then was enthralled by theories, each more interesting and more complex than the last. Then I could simply spend hours thinking about everything and anything. That was my comfort zone. Thinking. If I could wrap a theory around it to make sense of the world, then I felt better. Emotions were not my forte. I felt them. Intensely. But I did not express them and I did not like to show them. Yet the real world ate at me, dissatisfied me, and my emotions likewise curled into this dissatisfaction.

Introspection is something of great importance to my hermit nature. I always seek to understand myself, my actions and my reactions. I used to love taking personality tests to see if they could understand me as well as I did. Know thyself. There are people who always tend to blame external things, people and events for their failures. Those that indulge in introspection though, well we, tend to blame ourselves for every failure and fault. We are existentialists at heart. Knowing that we have the power and freedom to change who we are, choose how we react and inevitably we blame ourselves for the results.

Other than my vivid imagination and my preoccupation with abstractions what was real to me was pain. Chronic, unending pain that I could not escape and made me feel for dualist philosophers, such that I could

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