Not-so-personal space issue!

Have you ever felt like you wanted to be left alone? That even the person closest to you seemed like an interference? Maybe even an annoyance? A nuisance? Intruded in your space?? I do...I feel it quite unfrequently but when I do, I am not sure whether I should feel guilty about it or just treat it as another "personal space" issue.

It may be times when people bombard you with questions or even doubt you over something...maybe sometimes make you feel rather small. Or it may be times when you wish to retreat into the sanctity of your shell and just BE. Or times when you need to gather your thoughts before exposing yourself, even to your closest ones. Lets not forget the times when you feel you have been treated unfairly and need to be shown some remorse from the person before going back to being the usual way. Or times when you are annoyed with the world in general and need to cool down or you will snap! All these are instances when it is your absolute necessity to be alone. And these are incidents and emotions that everyone faces. How do you react then, should your need for privacy be treated differently, is looked down upon or worst still, taken as a personal insult by your close ones?

It would be unfair to state that it just our close ones who do this. Don't we do the same? When we are told to "leave them alone", how do we react? Unless it is a scene straight out of a soppy soap opera, no one lets go! No one sits back quietly waiting for the fire to silence. Everyone wants an answer, a comment, a reaction, right there, right then! Be it nasty, hurtful or the worst of all, brutally honest (which will eventually cause us to regret asking for it!).

What is the attraction that we have with playing on people's nerves? What is our attraction with promoting personal space ideals but getting mortified at the thought not being let into that space? Why does sharing lives,  sharing thoughts and sharing homes have to converge into sharing mind space as well?! We have all learnt the famous and highly abused maxim- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But yet we repeatedly refuse to follow it when it comes to personal space. We can get most perseverant in the silliest of  endeavors.We never cease trying to cross over that barbed fence of "personal space" of others despite hurting ourselves against it, time and again.

Aren't there times when you just thank God that mind is one desert that no man, other than ourselves, can encroach upon? It is time we took a moment and decided just how much of that un-encroachable area was really ours. If we found even a tiniest bit of empty land there, it would be a real investment cultivating an oasis there. So that, in future, God forbid but if anybody ever DID enter our personal space, we can engage them in the beautiful oasis there is, rather than hurting them with a barbed fence.