[a cloaked post revealed]
"Humans are social beings." This is the retort I got to my stubborn, dour outburst. I shy away from interaction whenever I'm in a rut, mainly out of embarrassment but also in self-defense. In such weakened conditions I blurt out all my inner travails, starved for understanding but only receiving pity and skewed pressure. I despise pity and all the wallowing vulnerability it permits; all pity is self-pity. I become defenseless in such instances, unable to resist the obsequious yearning to justify my behavior. But inundated with doubt, the distinction between known faults and perceived abnormalities blurs into a culminating indecision, which yields either paralysis or diversion. The good-intentioned advice I receive only increases my chagrin and leads me further astray. I sequester myself, dealing with my problems privately until I can regain enough composure to be who I am without guilt.
A side note that this leads me to ponder is the absurd perceived abnormality of solitude. In her advice, my friend worries about my "unhealthy" penchant for solitude and the fickleness which I exert when it comes to befriending people. Perhaps I am as overly judgmental as she claims but at the same time, I find nothing wrong with being selective, as I regard my time as precious and my privacy necessary. Again, my defense is weakened by the obviousness of my current misery, but then again, perhaps it is not without warrant as I think my previous plea makes apparent. How so? I tire so easily of constantly trying to justify who I am. Part of this is secrecy mixed with a weariness to perform and part of it is intimidation. I don't find it necessary to reiterate the mundanities of daily life to just anyone: I listen to people tell the same anecdotes over and over to whoever they come across; I listen to the same robotic cliché responses given without thought; I listen to enumerations of the day's completed tasks as if that in itself constitutes conversation; and I listen to know-it-all opinion after opinion on issues that will never be directly acted upon by the interlocutors themselves, as if collocation alone offers any solution but egocentric self-satisfaction. Yes, I'm not unaware of the irony: I hear myself participating in such talk too often, as this type of conversation is passive, unnecessary, and insecure. To this, I prefer silence and solitude.
But my silence in some cases is not spurred by abstinence but rather by intimidation. In these instances I should vocalize; however, such utterances are not desired to be explicit. I merely wish to say enough to be honest and in no way feel it necessary to explain myself beyond the minimum. I was having this discussion with another friend, as he considered it a breech of privacy when a vexing co-worker made the simple inquiry of what he did on that given day. We've discussed further on how promiscuously information is expected to be shared and how we both find it unnecessary to be so forth giving. Somewhat correlated, we also discussed how not already having plans to socialize, doesn't necessarily imply that we're free. Last Friday I was talking to my father on the phone and I found it easier to lie to him and say I had plans to go out with friends than I did to explain that I was choosing to spend the evening alone reading. I remember a few months back when his wife was out of town for a weekend and I had made plans with him to spend a night over at his place. He called me a week in advance to pencil me in so he could book up the rest of his time with lunches and dinners to keep himself occupied with company the entirety of the weekend. When my car ended up breaking down a couple days before and I told him I wouldn't be able to drive up to see him, it became this made rush for him to fill in the time that he had previously reserved for me. I remember talking to him a couple days later and listening to how much he felt he lucked out that one of his friends was free that night to do something, as if a Saturday night to one's self was such a dreadful thing to have.
I don't understand this constant need to fill up time doing things with other people, but yet I can't say that I'm fully exempt from succumbing to it myself. Of course I enjoy companionship and conversation as much as anyone, but I'm not going to spend time with people just for the sake of filling up my time. Even when I do socialize with some friends and family, there's an awkward expectation to be always doing something, as if communicating is only a way to pass the time between actions. Whenever I go home and try to spend the day with my sister she constantly complains about how bored she is and I either end up following her around from one store to the next, shopping, or watching the dreaded E! Channel, when I'd really prefer to just talk upfront with her. Even when I try to go off to my room to do my own thing (and yes, embarrassingly enough I can only tolerate so much E!), she'll barge in at some point and roll around on my bed complaining. I try to talk to her but she just tunes out and whines about how bored she is. I tell her to read a book or something and she says she doesn't have the attention span. I know too many people who bustle around shopping, running errands, organizing, and doing other such busywork all to avoid both serious thought and time alone. I find it is these same people that question the legitimacy of my lifestyle, and although I don't find it necessary to justify or elaborate to them on my choices, I would like to defend those choices enough to not be intimidated into silence and doubt by their expressed judgments.
On a side, side note, I feel a general loss of privacy among people and with it a great loss of solitude, especially with increasing technology. I get disgruntled lectures because I never answer my cell phone because I dislike being so easily reachable and interrupted, yet I carry that cell phone around with me everywhere and check it regularly. I am also prone to such privacy breeches as having myself signed on AIM all day long, posting my private reflections onto a public blog, letting friends see what movies I'm watching on Netflix, and having a MySpace page, so I can't exactly say I'm shunning the loss of privacy either. I am however very selective about which people get to view this private public self as most of these outlets are masked in anonymity. (Yes, I deleted my Facebook account so I'm officially not searchable via the web!)
Amid all this extra communication though, are people gaining any deeper of a connection with one another? Mostly I feel like all the available gadgets are more a waste of time than anything else and I do my best to avoid getting caught up in them. I have friends that can't sit in a car without being on their cell phones, can't be in their houses without the television on in the background, can't travel anywhere without their iPods glued to their ears, and then there's me, addicted to consuming information on the internet instead of going out and gaining knowledge from experience itself. I feel how much technology and fast-paced living increases people's fear of being left alone with their own thoughts. This fear keeps people from thinking for themselves, which makes it easier for the few remaining thinkers to make the decisions for everyone else. We trade in our thoughts for gadgets, privacy for security, individualism for categorization. Will later generations just be empty open books?
Okay, I repeatedly digressed from my original argument (and sub-argument), but I think I made my point, if not a few others.
"Humans are social beings." This is the retort I got to my stubborn, dour outburst. I shy away from interaction whenever I'm in a rut, mainly out of embarrassment but also in self-defense. In such weakened conditions I blurt out all my inner travails, starved for understanding but only receiving pity and skewed pressure. I despise pity and all the wallowing vulnerability it permits; all pity is self-pity. I become defenseless in such instances, unable to resist the obsequious yearning to justify my behavior. But inundated with doubt, the distinction between known faults and perceived abnormalities blurs into a culminating indecision, which yields either paralysis or diversion. The good-intentioned advice I receive only increases my chagrin and leads me further astray. I sequester myself, dealing with my problems privately until I can regain enough composure to be who I am without guilt.
A side note that this leads me to ponder is the absurd perceived abnormality of solitude. In her advice, my friend worries about my "unhealthy" penchant for solitude and the fickleness which I exert when it comes to befriending people. Perhaps I am as overly judgmental as she claims but at the same time, I find nothing wrong with being selective, as I regard my time as precious and my privacy necessary. Again, my defense is weakened by the obviousness of my current misery, but then again, perhaps it is not without warrant as I think my previous plea makes apparent. How so? I tire so easily of constantly trying to justify who I am. Part of this is secrecy mixed with a weariness to perform and part of it is intimidation. I don't find it necessary to reiterate the mundanities of daily life to just anyone: I listen to people tell the same anecdotes over and over to whoever they come across; I listen to the same robotic cliché responses given without thought; I listen to enumerations of the day's completed tasks as if that in itself constitutes conversation; and I listen to know-it-all opinion after opinion on issues that will never be directly acted upon by the interlocutors themselves, as if collocation alone offers any solution but egocentric self-satisfaction. Yes, I'm not unaware of the irony: I hear myself participating in such talk too often, as this type of conversation is passive, unnecessary, and insecure. To this, I prefer silence and solitude.
But my silence in some cases is not spurred by abstinence but rather by intimidation. In these instances I should vocalize; however, such utterances are not desired to be explicit. I merely wish to say enough to be honest and in no way feel it necessary to explain myself beyond the minimum. I was having this discussion with another friend, as he considered it a breech of privacy when a vexing co-worker made the simple inquiry of what he did on that given day. We've discussed further on how promiscuously information is expected to be shared and how we both find it unnecessary to be so forth giving. Somewhat correlated, we also discussed how not already having plans to socialize, doesn't necessarily imply that we're free. Last Friday I was talking to my father on the phone and I found it easier to lie to him and say I had plans to go out with friends than I did to explain that I was choosing to spend the evening alone reading. I remember a few months back when his wife was out of town for a weekend and I had made plans with him to spend a night over at his place. He called me a week in advance to pencil me in so he could book up the rest of his time with lunches and dinners to keep himself occupied with company the entirety of the weekend. When my car ended up breaking down a couple days before and I told him I wouldn't be able to drive up to see him, it became this made rush for him to fill in the time that he had previously reserved for me. I remember talking to him a couple days later and listening to how much he felt he lucked out that one of his friends was free that night to do something, as if a Saturday night to one's self was such a dreadful thing to have.
I don't understand this constant need to fill up time doing things with other people, but yet I can't say that I'm fully exempt from succumbing to it myself. Of course I enjoy companionship and conversation as much as anyone, but I'm not going to spend time with people just for the sake of filling up my time. Even when I do socialize with some friends and family, there's an awkward expectation to be always doing something, as if communicating is only a way to pass the time between actions. Whenever I go home and try to spend the day with my sister she constantly complains about how bored she is and I either end up following her around from one store to the next, shopping, or watching the dreaded E! Channel, when I'd really prefer to just talk upfront with her. Even when I try to go off to my room to do my own thing (and yes, embarrassingly enough I can only tolerate so much E!), she'll barge in at some point and roll around on my bed complaining. I try to talk to her but she just tunes out and whines about how bored she is. I tell her to read a book or something and she says she doesn't have the attention span. I know too many people who bustle around shopping, running errands, organizing, and doing other such busywork all to avoid both serious thought and time alone. I find it is these same people that question the legitimacy of my lifestyle, and although I don't find it necessary to justify or elaborate to them on my choices, I would like to defend those choices enough to not be intimidated into silence and doubt by their expressed judgments.
On a side, side note, I feel a general loss of privacy among people and with it a great loss of solitude, especially with increasing technology. I get disgruntled lectures because I never answer my cell phone because I dislike being so easily reachable and interrupted, yet I carry that cell phone around with me everywhere and check it regularly. I am also prone to such privacy breeches as having myself signed on AIM all day long, posting my private reflections onto a public blog, letting friends see what movies I'm watching on Netflix, and having a MySpace page, so I can't exactly say I'm shunning the loss of privacy either. I am however very selective about which people get to view this private public self as most of these outlets are masked in anonymity. (Yes, I deleted my Facebook account so I'm officially not searchable via the web!)
Amid all this extra communication though, are people gaining any deeper of a connection with one another? Mostly I feel like all the available gadgets are more a waste of time than anything else and I do my best to avoid getting caught up in them. I have friends that can't sit in a car without being on their cell phones, can't be in their houses without the television on in the background, can't travel anywhere without their iPods glued to their ears, and then there's me, addicted to consuming information on the internet instead of going out and gaining knowledge from experience itself. I feel how much technology and fast-paced living increases people's fear of being left alone with their own thoughts. This fear keeps people from thinking for themselves, which makes it easier for the few remaining thinkers to make the decisions for everyone else. We trade in our thoughts for gadgets, privacy for security, individualism for categorization. Will later generations just be empty open books?
Okay, I repeatedly digressed from my original argument (and sub-argument), but I think I made my point, if not a few others.
1 comment:
I've thought through this topic umpteen times in my head (it branches so quickly). I believe I've even done so in a blog-like format (if only somebody would take dictation!). If I ever do start up a blog, I will post a similar entry (more likely entries), not intending to mimic, but if only to put my own stamp on the matter.
For now, I will simply state that:
1. I find it strange that people abhor/fear solitude, and
2. I agree that "not already having plans to socialize...doesn't necessarily imply that we're free."
I have so much more I want to say about this topic, and I originally didn't want to post anything at all because I wanted the response to be perfect, but that is a fear/habit I will have to overcome, especially if I ever intend to write a blog with a material amount of content (there are other reasons, too).
Thank you for revealing this entry!
Post a Comment