By Jim Hagarty
I am a hermit.
Sounds awful, right?
I blame it on the 10-hour days on the back of a tractor, rooting up the earth on our farm. I was all by myself and I got to like my own company that way. I didn’t have much choice. No fun riding around on a tractor for 10 hours with a guy you can’t stand.
One day there were no more farms or tractors but it was too late. I have gone through the last 45 years as though I was still sitting in that leather seat, hands on the steering wheel, blue skies, seagulls and trees stretching out before me. And not a human in sight.
Some day, I might slide from hermit to recluse but that’s a bit off yet. Still, were I a member of a Trappist Monestery, where they don’t talk to each other from one day to another, I am sure the other monks would get around to saying, when they were allowed a word or two: “What’s wrong with Brother Jim? He’s a weird one.”
I would be a terrible monk.
My best friend is also a hermit. I am not sure what his excuse is. He was raised in town. But we share a happy hermitry together. To be honest, I am not sure how one hermit finds another hermit, but it happened.
We don’t see each other very often, as you would expect from two hermits. But when we get together, our coffee sessions last, on average, five hours. Both of us spill out all the words we would have used if we were normal and not hermits. It’s exhausting but once emptied out, we can each go back to happy hermiting in our separate hideouts. Those hideouts are sacrosanct; we never visit each other.
I can’t really tell you what it is about being a hermit that appeals to me. Maybe it has something to do with the almost total absence of other human beings. Humans are fine and all but they get on my nerves a lot less when I can’t see them. Because most of them spend their time with me, talking about other humans.
Someday before I die, probably alone somewhere, I will likely throw a big party, invite everyone I have managed to meet over the years in spite of my hermitry. Then I will forget to send myself an invitation and fail to show up.
It told you it’s awful.
