Ah, that is a good question! I'll answer in detail, for maybe that will further illustrate the topic of this blog post.

In the mid 1990's I was a young father. As a form on furious youth rebellion I had fought against all the expectations of my parents and the mainstream society, by starting a family of my own. I thoroughly enjoyed it, parenthood was central to my identity, and I was mostly interested in the practical details of everyday parenting - like, how to solve the daily little situations without using shaming nor any other standard form of emotional pressure to force the child to behave; instead, I wanted to find ways how to support the emotional and cognitive development of the child so that he will learn how to get along with this world and other people. My primary social sphere consisted of a handful of stay-at-home mothers living in the same block. They all were ten years older than I was, lower working class, and rather friendly people who gladly accepted me as a part of our neighbourhood group of parents helping each other.

Then, as the mainstream society was putting increasing economic pressure on me, I couldn't stay at home forever. In Finland it was a time of economic depression, there simply weren't that many job positions open. So, to do something I applied to the University, to study philosophy. That was about the only decent thing I could imagine, as what I would've really wanted to do would be just to leave behind the mainstream society retreating to live in the woods. But since I had no resources to do that, I chose the least worst option available - the University.

For me the University always was kind of a secondary stuff - my main sphere of life was still the parenting stuff at our suburban block. I met other students hoping to discuss philosophy with them - afer all, I felt that was the only thing I had common with the other students. I couldn't discuss parenting with them, I didn't yet know how to talk about my own emotional problems, so the only thing I wanted to talk about was the main subject we were studying, as - yes - I found academical philosophy rather interesting, and sometimes the informal student discussions were about as enlightening as the official lectures.

Oh well. But I was also struggling with my emotional pain, slowly trying to figure out my inner social barriers and how to deal with them. So, for a while I went to meet the other students also for the sake of trying to learn how to socialize with others. I contributed into the student activity by participating in organizing events and meetings. Some of those meetings took place in the woods, we sat by camp-fire socializing. Most of the time most of those events left me feeling empty and isolated, just confirming my belief that I don't know how to socialize. Sometimes I went to those meetings just to momentarily escape my steadily deteriorating relationship back at home.

The final phase of my student life was rather crappy one. I remember winter morning, I had woken up at 11 am, shivering from emotional pain. Downing anti-depression medicine with a sip of red wine, then cooking a pot of black coffee, using a lot of energy to contain my suicidal thoughts. And writing my BA dissertation on the side. At those times I thought that despite all the effort I put in learning to be social, did I make a single friend who would be my side when I need it the most? Someone who would care to pay a visit just to check that I didn't commit suicide just yet? Nope, I didn't make a single friend with who I could share things which matter the most to me - thoughts about parenting, and thoughts about coping with rather severe traumatic issues. I never blamed the others for me feeling lonely, as I perfectly well understood that it is just a case of me not knowing how to be friends.

So I walked away from the student life, retreating elsewhere to lick my wounds. Later on a few of the people from the University years re-surfaced in my life, and they have proven to be lasting friendships. Not that much for the sake of nostalgia, but for we all have moved on in our life and now have new things we feel like sharing (which, naturally, also includes discussing philosophy, but we are now mostly dealing with contemporary literature, instead of endlessly dwelling in the stuff we read in our student years).

At some point, maybe four years ago or so, I suddenly felt like a small student reunion. In the times of facebook that was rather easy to organize; I sent a message to everyone I had contact with, asking them to inform their contacts, so that anyone who is interested in a reunion meeting could come to the bar which used to be our regular meeting place, some fifteen years ago. That meeting took place, a handful of people turned up, and we mostly had good times remembering the most funny moments of our young student years. Later on that year it also was an official 30th year anniversary party of the University philosophy students group. Out of curiosity I also went there, talked a little with some other people and ended up having a panic attack, fleeing the place leaving behind some of my clothes as I was too panicked to gather all of my stuff - I needed to escape as soon as possible. I drove back home, feeling safe in the solitude, and happy that my student years are past and gone.

Now then, in autumn 2017 I went to a cinema together with my son and his girlfriend. (They are now about the same age I was in my student years.) They are part of my primary social sphere, people I like to see and to spend time together with. As we took our seats in the cinema, it turned out that right in front of me in the next row it was Tommi, a fellow student from the University years.

Tommi told me that he just realized that is 20 years since the Nälkäkallio meeting. It took me a few seconds to figure out what he is talking about - then I remembered that indeed, one of our student events was a bicycle trip to the woods south of Tampere. We were a bunch of people, we cycled some 15 - 20 kilometres, climbed a small rocky hillock and set up a camp-fire there, cooking food and eating together. I remember how, as we were a jolly posse of people laughing and cycling together, I had absolutely no feeling of togetherness. Despite all the good things, like cycling, cooking and eating together, I just felt that all of my energy goes into containing my depression which I didn't show to the others. So, at no point did I feel like being together with the others, all the time I felt just trapped inside the darkness of my own soul. So that I only remember a few of the people who attended that meeting, and then there were some people I don't remember who they were, for I felt like having absolutely no contact with the others. Again, that disconnectedness was not because of the others, but because of me, my inner world which I didn't know how to share with others, my inner world which was so full of emotional pain that no external impulses could get in.

While my brain was still processing these memories, I started to anticipate that maybe Tommi is about to invite me to a reunion meeting; let's gather the old posse and meet again at the Nälkäkallio! Alas, it turned out I was wrong; Tommi asked me to organize the meeting.

Again, it took me a few seconds trying to figure out why he would ask me to do something which he himself is interested in. Like, I don't even remember all the people who were there, I don't have their contact information, it would be some work trying to contact those people. Other than that, organizing a meeting is an easy thing to do - just pick a place and date, and send a message to people inviting them to come. But before I got to ask Tommi why he doesn't invite the people himself, he went on explaining that he expects me to organize a reunion meeting for I always was such a central figure in the social sphere. I simply didn't know what to answer to that, for I felt that Tommi's image of me has just a very little do with the way I experienced the social sphere myself.

Like, if it twenty years ago was so that I was one of the persons who did the work of organizing events, it doesn't mean that I enjoyed doing so, nor that I would like to do it again. The heck, even if someone else organized a Nälkäkallio reunion meeting, I wouldn't participate for in my memories that particular event was nothing so special, but just an another frustration in the long chain of my own experiences of social anxiety and failure.

So, to conclude this reply, let's utilize some good old tools of philosophical formalization. To me it seems that Tommi's question "You mean there would never be another Nälkäkallio festival?" consists of two assumptions;
Assumption 1: Erkka is not going to organize another Nälkäkallio festival
Assumption 2: If Erkka doesn't do it, no-one else will
The logical conclusion: Therefore another Nälkäkallio festival will never happen

This reasoning is logically valid. Also, the assumption 1. is correct. What comes to the assumption 2, I honestly don't know if Tommi means what he says, or if this is just a question of wording, or just another display of the constant provocation, joking and performance which was Tommi's habit some twenty years ago (I don't know if it still is, so I avoid jumping to a conclusion). Either way, if there really is something like the assumption 2, I think that quite neatly sums up some of my persistent problems with social life, the reasons why I often prefer my semi-hermit solitude.

I mean, the assumption 2. comes with the idea that there is work to be done, and other people find that work either too boring or too hard for them to do - so they get this grand idea that "Hey, let's tell Erkka to do this work!". As if I had some magical powers which would make it easier for me to do that boring or hard work? Or maybe me feeling bored or struggling with laborous work just doesn't matter? Or maybe the others just have (a false) image that "Erkka will make things happen!". I can tell you that I don't. And, certainly, I don't enjoy it when other people have such an image of me which feels almost totally alien to me. In such situations, even if I'm physically present and sharing with those other people, it feels that they don't see or hear me - they only see and hear their false image of me; and then get offended if I don't behave the way they expect me to behave because of their own false image of me. That is exactly the type of social interaction which makes me to shut up and to walk away.