Oops, not music related.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/02/08/the_end_of_alone/

The article listed above is admittedly lengthy, but a great representation of what I had been trying to spew out in the past entry (and it's written significantly better).
"The End of Alone" written in the Boston Globe, gives a beautiful and inspiring picture of how disconnected we have become to ourselves. My first reaction to this article was "man I know someone who would relish in all this philosophical bull", but then I began to feel a bit of the guilt that I have been feeling recently because of our loss of our sense of the self. For myself, I am nowhere near as technologically advanced as most. I am overwhelmed by the keyboard on my phone, better yet the e-mail and photo capabilities. I could say it's sad, but is it really? I do enjoy my alone time, but when I think about it my alone time is usually me sitting with my book, my notebook, a pen or pencil, some sweet soul music gently bumping and my cell phone casually placed on the coffee table. Just in case. So I'll admit that after reading this wonderfully written article, I did feel a bit guilty and disconnected with myself, even though I have been making good efforts to "find myself". I can sympathize with the anxiety of doing things alone. Now, I go to the movies alone, I go get lunch or dinner by myself (remembering my book, or journal always), and shop alone. I don't have much a choice in the matter to be honest, if there's something I want/need to do, I go do it. But sometimes I do these things when I am lonely. If I'm just sitting alone in my apartment and most of the time I can't bring myself to turn on the TV and I can only read and write for so long before the pages and words begin to blur, so I go out. Furthering the arguement, he discusses great writers such as "DESCARTES, NEWTON, LOCKE, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard -- they share the distinction of having been some of the greatest thinkers the world has known. They also share this: None of them ever married or had their own families, and most of them spent the bulk of their lives living alone." So then I began to think, where is the fun in that?! A naive and probably ignorant statement that only further confirms this change in our society.
So I thought about our desperation for relationships, our haunting fear of being alone in this big bad world, that everyone claims is so small, and tried to figure out some kind of middle ground. How can I have faith and confidence in myself when alone but still find peace in another. It's all quite contradictory in my mind. I found several articles on the importance of building relationships. Unfortunately, most of them were quite qhetto looking and didn't really connatate a good sense of integrity (I know, I'm stereotyping a website) so I'm not going to post any of them here. Generally they supported the importance of building interpersonal relationships, whether they be friendships, business, romantic, or otherwise. The funny thing about these articles is that they all discuss "needs", and how our relationships are based on these "needs" and how we determine what we want to get out of a relationship based on these "needs". So what are the needs? I'm sure we could list a million of them, and I'll leave it open to the discussion (not that anyone will discuss it). I'm sure a lot of these needs are things that I've already talked about in the previous entry: validation, comfort, security, self-esteem, and companionship. According to our first half of the debate, these are things that we are supposed to find within ourselves. But I do feel like relationships are important, and not specifically for these things but for other aspects of our life such as communication and other social skills, connection, and how about fun!
Yes, after reading the Boston Globe article I did have a sense of guilt for not taking every moment of my life to reflect on the time-space continuum, but as I think more about it, as these things tend to cause me to do, I don't feel guilty at all and the fact that someone would try and make me feel guilty for not living my life as they have is just wrong. Yes I agree that our society is a bit too involved with their technologies, but think of how that line of communication has improved business, adventure, and possibility. My relationships that I have built and broken for myself were not based on needs, they were just based on pure enjoyment.
Comfort: relief in affliction; consolation; a cause or matter of relief or satisfaction; a state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety.
This definition has quietly haunted me for many years. And it amazes me that something so simple and positive could cause such an uproar in ones mind. What a debate - this paradox called comfort. Do we find this in ourselves, in others, in our bed, in music, in television, or some may never find it. In my opinion I think this goes for our critically acclaimed thinkers listed above. In an effort to claim that any and all peace in your life must be harvested on your own, they had sheltered themselves from relationships and love. Sometimes, I feel like love was simply made up in order to justify these cravings of comfort and security, and then as time went on it became marriage. But I can't leave myself to feel so negative towards love. As much I hate it most days, it also is something beautiful that we can find in ourselves and share with others. A passion that fuels us and reminds us that we are alive. For those thinkers that hid alone, I feel sympathy for the overwhelming flow of thoughts, but I also feel that they were quite arrogant, making others feel incompetent and shallow for building relationships when maybe they were just as scared as the rest of us.
I don't want to drag on and on about this forever because, as the previous entry it will become non-sensical and redundant. We've very briefly looked at two very different sides to a very difficult debate. I believe in a middle ground, most don't believe in anything at all. I remember a good line from a Ray Lamontagne song where he said something like "you build these walls, but walls will only crush you when they fall" and if you don't ever let the walls crumble, you will always be hidden and closed, whether your are looking to open yourself to the world or other people.
Highly recommend Gabe Dixon's live performance of "Is This Love" - check it.