Funny how technology can often encourage the fear of being alone. Autophobia. How appropriate, no? After all, many of us, happy to be on auto-pilot, experience withdrawal during hours without email, phones, cable, and Facebook. I'll be the first to admit that I've caved in and spent time with NetFlix when my goal was to dodge myself, when I didn't want to acknowledge my psyche or the Spirit.
Maybe "alone" is not the right word here, exactly. Maybe slowing down and realizing one's actual size in the universe is harder than we acknowledge it to be. Heck, I come from a people called "the quiet in the land," and (many? most?) of us are now just as much a part of the rat-race as greater society. Feel free to prove me wrong, please.
How would America change if spending time alone (in order to know the self more deeply) wasn't seen as a weakness? (I don't think it's an accident that I began to type "wean" back there!)
A friend sent an Online video to me today, and it really struck a chord. Check it out:
"How to Be Alone"
I hope, dear reader, that you're circled by community, by people who've learned and love the layers that are you. But I also hope you can take yourself out for a walk now and then, to a movie, a concert--and still feel held. Whole. Tilting towards happy.
Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldua writes about carrying home on her back like a turtle--something she can never escape, but something she wants to keep reclaiming as her own. The self, too, gets transformed depending on where we take it, how we carry it, how we listen and react.
I'm turning off the computer now, the radio, the lights. The cicadas are the loudest they'll be this summer. They've been trying to get my attention. It's about time I let them.
