112) How to Be Alone

This video appeared on my Facebook news feed today. Not only is the poem, How to Be Alone by Tanya Davis, beautifully written, but its lines ring and strike at a deep, universal truth. We, as humans, are terrified of being alone. These days, even if we are alone, we use crutches like our cell phones, our iPod, or a book to casually keep us company. And with the Internet in our back pockets, we are never really alone, are we?

The poem does a good job in reconciling that age old question of whether being alone is a good or bad thing. Humans are social creatures, aided exponentially by today's social network platforms. Being "social" is considered a positive quality, just as having lots of friends is smiled upon. And yet, we still put value on "me" time. We all have things that we do that allow us to be alone with ourselves. What the poem suggests is that we embrace and cherish our alone time, and take the perspective we gain from that time and share it with the ever-present community.

(Mini aside: I deem this week the week of dismantled plans. Whatever preconceived notions I had about plans both big and small have come undone, spinning out of control in ways that are both frightening and stressful. I guess this is the price one pays for a temporarily unstructured life. I know I've already written a post on the simultaneous futility and essentialness of planning, so I won't dwell on this. Just needed to get down where my head's at.)