It’s been ‘real’, y’know?

It’s been a week in which I have been sur­roun­ded by action, con­stant bustle; I have been (almost) over­whelmed by things going on all around me. And yet … and yet I’ve not really had a proper con­ver­sa­tion with any­one. Know that feel­ing? Good. I’m glad you under­stand where I’m com­ing from.

Maybe it’s because there’s a part of me that’s con­stantly seek­ing that indefin­able some­thing, but I always like to come away from a week feel­ing that I’ve learned — about myself, about the world, about other people.

This week, I learned that while it’s good to remem­ber that each and every one of us is unique, it’s not good to kid ourselves that we’re so unique that nobody else feels what we feel; that nobody can pos­sibly exper­i­ence emo­tions in the same way. I think that about myself far too often — nor­mally as I sink into one of those pits that invari­ably sud­denly opens up in the path ahead; at those moments, it’s kind of com­fort­ing to ima­gine that only I feel like this, that nobody else under­stands. In a strange and rather unnerv­ing way, it makes me feel special.

Oh, and it’s selfish too. It’s the ulti­mate example of wal­low­ing in one’s own reflect­ive, self-obsessed emo­tions. Self-pity? Maybe … no, self-pity’s too harsh. (In fact, scratch this para­graph. I’ve lost my train of thought at this point, but I’ll keep this para­graph here just so you can see the dir­ec­tion my thoughts — such as they were — were taking).

Where was I? Oh yes, I remember.

So this week, I had news for myself. I made me take a long, hard look at myself. I faced facts (and any other par­ody of par­ental telling-off you wish to use). You see, I dis­covered that I’m not spe­cial — or not in the way I thought, at least.

If you do the same as me — if you plunge heart-first and head-last into those bad times every now and then, almost eagerly con­vin­cing your­self that you’re alone in your par­tic­u­lar feel­ings — then it’s time to real­ise that there are thou­sands of other people who feel exactly the same as you. Of course, you’re not going to know who those other people are; but by the law of aver­ages, if there are thou­sands, then one of them may be someone you know very well.

And then all you need to do is find the moment to break the ice. Talk to each other. Con­fess — at least to a cer­tain extent (it’s good for the soul, appar­ently). Dis­cover. Com­pare. There is some degree of com­fort there, believe me.

Flawed ana­logy com­ing up, then. Emo­tions are like music — there is a fant­astic, bewil­der­ing and invent­ive range of music out there, but ulti­mately it all starts with the same lim­ited pack­age of notes. And because those notes are unques­tion­ingly finite, inev­it­ably some melod­ies are going to be uncan­nily sim­ilar. I was temp­ted to add, in the words of Eric More­cambe, that “I’m play­ing all the right notes, just not neces­sar­ily in the right order” — but I thought that might only con­fuse matters.

I’ve made that mis­take of writ­ing on Fri­day even­ing again, haven’t I? Am I mak­ing any sense? Do you fol­low what I’m say­ing? Should I get my coat?