What’s mankind’s greatest fear that doesn’t involve actual physical pain or death?
I’d have to say isolation ranks very high on the list. The idea that you could wake up one morning to find yourself the only living person in the world and know you would never see another human being for the rest of your life is extremely unsettling.
Look back 60 years to one of the most intelligent television series ever broadcast — Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” and you will see numerous episodes dealing with extreme isolation. Indeed, the very first episode was called “Where is Everybody?”
Earl Holliman played an Air Force officer who finds himself completely alone in a small American town. As he roams through the town looking for someone, anyone, he becomes more and more frantic.
Eventually, he snaps. Then we see he isn’t in the town at all. He’s a would-be astronaut who has been undergoing isolation training for a possible interplanetary flight. One of the officers conducting the test comments.
“You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates. We can supply microfilm for reading, recreation – even movies of a sort. We can pump oxygen in and waste material out. But there’s one thing we can’t simulate that’s a very basic need. Man’s hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness – that’s one thing we haven’t licked yet.”
Then there’s “Time Enough at Last,” where Burgess Meredith plays a man who wishes he had time to indulge in his true love — reading. While he is working in an underground bank vault, a nuclear war kills everyone else. He is overjoyed to realize that he will now have time to read all the books he wants.
Then he stumbles and his spectacles fall and are smashed. He cannot see well enough to read.
He is completely and totally alone.
Those certainly aren’t the only stories with that theme, but they might be the best two.
I have had periods in my life where I had periods of isolation, although I always knew they were finite and would end. In my last eight years of single life — in St. Louis, Colorado, Reno and Anaheim — I lived alone. From the time I came home from work to the time I left for work the next day, I might go that entire time without speaking a word.
As pleasant as that could be, I always knew it wasn’t permanent. Anytime I felt the need for company, I could phone someone or go out of the apartment. But as often as not, I would get home from work around 11:30, put on Johnny Carson and watch that and a late movie until I fell asleep on my couch.
That was more than 30 years ago, and the odds are good I’ll never be alone like that again. I have a wife I adore and children and grandchildren I love dearly.
Being alone was never something that frightened me.
Of course I never had to face true isolation.