If you were alone and did not have any company, would you hesitate to do any one of the following?
  • Going outside to eat
  • Shopping
  • Going for a leisurely walk
  • Watching a movie
  • Visiting a park/beach/museum

If your answers to all the above questions are similar to ‘Of course not, I wouldn’t hesitate to carry on. It’s no big deal’, I’m happy that I have company.
If your answers to the above questions are similar to ‘Perhaps I would hesitate. But if it was absolutely necessary I would go’, this post would make more sense to you.
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Man is a social animal. He longs for company though he may not express it openly.  There is nothing wrong with that. It always feels nice if you have someone to talk to, if you have someone to eat with and hang around and if you are surrounded by people. Usually when people are in big group, there tends to be a free flow of positivity and laughter, which will definitely improve our mood and make us feel lighter and happier. That’s why they say, when you share your happiness with others it tends to multiply, but when you share your problem with others, they seem to diminish. I would say, having people for company is not a necessity but an affordable luxury.

All of us have different sets of friends. We have school friends, college friends, friends from work and so on. Just as we segregate our friends based on the manner of acquaintance, we also have friends’ gang for certain activities. For example I know people who have a certain set of friends with whom they watch movies, a certain set for eating out and trying various restaurants and a certain set of friends who suddenly decided to meet up and head to the beach to just hang out.
This being said, I would also like to make it clear that I don’t completely rely on my friends (family and other acquaintances) to always accompany me for all my outings. There have been many times when I’ve gone shopping alone and I’ve not regretted that even once. I definitely like company, but not to the extent of changing my plans just because of the reason that I don’t have company.
I recently came across a situation where one acquaintance refused to eat lunch and decided to starve just because the said person did not have company.
I usually go for lunch at work with a specific group of friends, most of the times, unless I need to meet someone else or vice versa. We ensure that we head out for lunch at a standard time since it would be easy for people from different projects to coordinate and manage their work.  But yes, on many days we don’t get to meet on the set time, thanks to our various demanding schedules. One such day I had to get a quick lunch since I had a meeting scheduled at a certain time. I informed my acquaintance and headed for lunch.  
The next day, I was told that the person had skipped lunch because apparently the others who usually accompany us for lunch were held up with work and couldn’t make it. So this person, instead of heading out to the cafeteria all by herself, chose to skip the meal instead. On being asked why she did that, she said ‘How do you expect me to eat all by myself?’. Somehow better sense prevailed and I kept my mouth shut realizing that it would make things worse if I started arguing.
I let this incident pass and I almost forgot about that, until recently I came across another person, in an entirely different scenario who had to go shopping for something that was important but refused to do so because there was no one for company. ‘How do you expect me to go to EA all by myself’ would have been the response, if I had asked. I was sure about that.
I understand that it would be different if we went alone, but does it really matter that much? To the extent of changing your plans just because others aren’t there, even though they aren’t required? Are we so dependent on people that we change our schedules as per others’ convenience?  Or is it just because of the fear of being ridiculed by others when they get to know that you went out alone? Haven’t we grown up or are we still trying to live our life wondering what others would probably be thinking or probably be speaking?
I honestly feel that these are trivial things and they shouldn’t actually be given the importance they are being treated with. I understand that certain things aren’t fun unless you have company. I completely agree with that. But for certain insignificant stuff, just a  split-second decision of whether to go or not to go becomes unnecessarily complicated by taking into account certain external factors that are nowhere in the picture, in the first place.
So, what do you think?