most ourselves
... I believe Eurydice is actually the poet, not Orpheus. Her muse has his back to her with his ear bent to his own heart. As if what you learn making love to yourself matters more than what you learn when loving someone else.
—Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin, p59.
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A little more than a month ago, I was fortunate enough to have a day filled with friends. I watched Pitt's commencement livestream with some fellow graduates, had a long chat with an old roommate, laughing over Netflix's Sex Education, and then called a friend to test a phone problem, and the conversation extended to an hour.
Over the course of the day, I realized I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time. I also realized I'd become unused to socializing, and I'd probably been in a bad mood for several days without realizing it. I hope I managed that bad mood well.
At the same time, as I'm sure many of you have experienced, quarantining causes a kind of listlessness. Even if we are fortunate enough to have health and work and loved ones in our households, being cooped up all day makes us feel like crap—from the lack of exercise, fresh air, vitamin D—and, of course, the inability to do the things and see the people that we love.
Lock-downs have made us feel purposeless, too. Where we once had response, rapport, relationships, we now find a significant void, and what of those we do have come in more ephemeral forms. The like and comment replace the long conversation with your professor about your essay, your coworker about your research. Instead of visiting the woman I tutor in her home—seeing her children and hearing them laugh, enjoying her company and the smell of her cooking—I now visit through the small screen of a video call. We miss the tangible benefits of doing what we love.
This change makes me think of two things.
First: the way the digital world connects us, while a blessing in this time, is incomparable to movement, physical company, and physical spaces. Second: despite the many think-pieces professing otherwise, isolation has not helped me "find myself"—in fact, I feel less myself, even like I'm losing myself.
Thanks to books like Thoreau's Walden, solitude is idolized as a requirement for personal growth. A plethora of articles circulating around the internet advocate for taking time for self-reflection with long journal entries, to ruminate on who you are and what you want out of life. Only in these long periods of solitude, they seem to say, can we dig deep to discover our true desires and identities.
But in the book Natural Causes, Barbara Ehrenreich correlates the emergence of the modern idea of the self, plus everything that comes with it—self-portraits, journaling, mirrors, autobiography—with increased rates of anxiety and depression. Once we discovered there were whole worlds within us, perhaps we found those worlds less hospitable than we expected.
Of course, silence and solitude is necessary. We need space to think without others' voices, to process the world on our own terms. If we are fortunate enough not to suffer from certain mental illnesses, solitude often brings peace. It connects us with the nonhuman world and allows us to move slower, and thus think more deeply and carefully.
But for me, an introspective introvert, the amount of solitude granted by stay-at-home orders is (1) too easy and (2) self-indulgent and self-serving.
I enjoy my solitude. I love having a ridiculous amount of time to write and read and make art, to go on long walks and listen to the birds, because it's easy. No one gets in my way. I don't have to account for anyone else's wants, needs, or feelings.
This can become dangerous territory. Without the company of others, we lose our ability to accommodate people, interpret their emotions from a glance or an inflection in their voice. We lose our ability to consider another point of view on the spot, or to hold a meaningful conversation.
I thought about this a lot after reading a short story by Ayse Papatya Bucak, "Mysteries of Mountain South." In a blog, a character writes, "I sometimes think I am most myself alone – but it's easy to be good and noble and true when nobody is bothering you. Who you really are is who you are when other people are bothering you."
Sometimes I think I am better off alone. I think I'm often selfish, too concerned with my immediate wants, and that I lack peripheral vision. If this is my natural state, perhaps those around me are better off if I keep to myself.
But this line of thinking is confirmation bias. The truth is I, as well as nearly every other person in the world, am loved by others. I am lucky they love me, and I, them. Keeping away for too long does either side a disservice.
At the same time, who are we but the people we love and the things we love to do? By being together, we learn to love them a bit better.
Hanging out with friends reminded me that I am often moody and impatient, awkward and selfish. But I also remembered that I can be funny and considerate and generous, too. I think only by being together can we understand who we really are, the bad parts and good. Only in the company of others are we most ourselves.
Keep safe, and thanks for reading!
—Mia
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