Thursday, September 3, 2009

Aloneness

I saw a picture of my grandson that reminded me of the way he likes to be alone. I used to be that way too. I remember sitting out on the rocks in front of Cannery Row finding peace in the sound of the ocean crashing on the big rocks splashing up into the sky and falling back into the foam.

I was the oldest in a chaotic family of 4 siblings. My parents were not happy and there was never a quiet moment. Sitting by the ocean with its rhythmic roar was very different from hearing my parents argue or my siblings constant babble. With a dog, 14 cats, 3 siblings and fighting parents there was never a moment of quiet and then came the television, radio , and phonographs. But by the ocean it was all drowned out, not only from the air but from my mind.

There was always the reentry into the chaos but for a moment I was at peace and one with something bigger than myself, bigger than the goings on around me, just the "isness" of being.

This separateness gave me some comfort, but I really wanted to be part of something. I searched all through my life for the one place I fit in, but at every turn there was someone that wanted my place. Someone who was jelous of what I could do or wanted so badly to do it themselves that they needed to discredit me so they could take over. As I backed down to their greater desire I lost my place over and over until now there is nothing that I want to be a part of.

It took me a long time to give up wanting to be part of something. I wonder if he has given up already.

1 comment:

Chani said...

I do not think 'fitting in' is the same for everybody, I think it's a specific set of patterns that are complementary to one another. if you happen to have one of those patterns (which most people do), you resonate with other people and find the ones that don't clash and that's your group. The people who naturally gravitate to that same wavelength.

Make that more complicated by allowing people to support primary and secondary patterns (those they can't help but have and those that they could have in certain circumstances) and many of each, make them change over time and make them viral (i.e. affected by the patterns around them) and you get something akin to the chaos of modern social dynamics.

Unfortunately, some people don't have very complimentary primary patterns or don't have very many secondary patterns. These people are outliers to how the world works in general. That can be a bad thing (it's certainly a lonely thing), but it's also how humanity evolves - somebody's got to be different to introduce new ideas and new patterns that may or may not flourish.