Alone in the Crowd

There are plenty of people close to me. When need comes, they somehow drift far away. Many want to be close, but no one wants to stay close.

They love me, they wish me well. Yet when I need them most, they are somewhere I cannot reach... I cannot find them. Searching and not finding, I've grown lately into something like emotional numbness. When someone claims to be my close one, I feel like laughing.

It's not that they aren't truly my close ones—yet I cannot understand why, even in crisis, I've never found one or two of them by my side till now. Nor is it that they lacked the ability, opportunity, or time to stand with me. They had all of it. Only the desire, the will was missing. Unless calamity falls upon their own heads, people don't trouble themselves much about anything for no reason. In modern times, the art of keeping yourself safe is what we call living long.

So many well-wishers, so many close ones... where were they hiding during my times of suffering? Yet yes, in happy days I've never lacked for friends or close people. Though people may consider someone theirs, generally no one thinks another's disaster is their own—except perhaps themselves. You only understand when you fall into trouble: the depth of the ocean of helplessness makes even the Pacific seem shallow.

So who then is truly close to you? Whoever stands by your side to the end, indifferent to the risk of becoming wretched and despised—that is your close one. Those we consider close, it turns out, rarely if ever prove useful in a lifetime. Life doesn't need close people so much as it needs useful ones.