Be Silent, Be Still...and May the Force Be With YouI write from Connecticut on a rainy Saturday night. I’ve slowed down, left the city, and am situated on the sofa, fireplace bubbling away, Star Wars is on TV, computer on my lap, and tea on the table beside me. I am doing some thinking here in my sanctuary, in a space where I am with myself alone and therefore am myself completely. Usually, such is when I am most content, answering to no one but myself and my dog, two beings who I know will never disappoint. I am worlds away from the flashing lights and deafening music of the nighttime environment that I’ve occupied of late, an atmosphere that simultaneously speeds and slows time. Feelings of freedom manifest in so many different ways. At times, it is on the dance floor that I am alive and in step with my own sense of self. Right now however, it is in the slowness of Star Wars and sleepy time tea that I find my own thoughts the most organized.
Yet tonight, with each passing hour spent in my own company, I recognize feelings of frustration that I have with myself, ones that have been clarified by slowing down and sitting still. I am exasperated with my continual repetition of familiar and unfruitful choices and my simultaneous hesitance to trust.
I wonder though, if those feelings of dissatisfaction directed at my own personhood are also upsets with others that are easier directed fully at myself. Is it that I cannot trust or that others are untrustworthy? Perhaps, but maybe there’s more to it. Time and again, as I move through my life, I find myself wondering what happened to getting to know one another? People are so anxious to get what they want from others that they throw the process of forging friendship into hyper drive. The result is a handful of relationships in which nobody really knows each other. I suppose it is ostensibly easier to project your desires onto others, making people into who you want them to be. But so far, my experience tells me that such never yields lasting connections.
Here I am on the sofa, spending time with myself, comfortable going slow and sitting with the unabashedly honest workings of my own unfiltered thoughts. No loud music is necessary now to numb my words, no vodka cranberry to ease my anxious mind and make conversing less awkward. I’m not busy and I won’t feign an impending assignment or appointment to give my silence an endpoint.
Outside the peepers are chirping, a sound I enjoy with a bit of surprise and a great deal of content as they are the heralds of the warmer months, evenings of balmy breezes and solstice moons overhead.
I’m ok in this space, alone and ok, two sentiments that are oftentimes seen as contradictory. I place a great deal of importance upon being able to be alone, possibly because I know I have a tendency to hold others at arms length and partially because I think it impossible to connect with others before you can do so fully with your own self. It’d be interesting, however, if we all did this more with each other. If we behaved in the company of our friends and lovers the way we do when we’re alone on the sofa watching Star Wars. Maybe we don’t trust one another enough to be silent; maybe without the music and mayhem of this month’s hottest club, or the distractions and discord of a New York City weekday, we’re afraid of what we might let in.
An acquaintance recently grabbed me by the shoulders and asked, “when are you going to let someone in?” – I was taken aback by the realness of the question and have thought of it several times since then. I wish I knew the answer and admit that I do not. I think, however, that it will happen when someone is willing to sit on this sofa with me and forget I’m here, sharing their stillness and silence…and Star Wars of course.
1 comment:
Maybe what I should have said is re-connect with yourself. I place importance upon the concept not because I relish in mulling over my own inner diatribes but because I find putting words to the workings of my mind’s eye difficult, not for lack of vocabulary, but by virtue of a visceral fear. When once upon a time I presented myself, unfiltered to anyone and everyone who crossed my path, I find myself somewhat changed, having strayed from unabashed and utter honesty in my dealings with others. Such is frustrating and infuriating, especially as it is seemingly out of my control. I feel a silent bystander to my own tendency to repeat the self-defensive stances I’ve historically taken. Time and again I watch myself push people away or brush them off with sarcastic comments . It seems to me that we are born into this world as innocent and honest creatures, senses of self that are, over time, eroded into being semblances of self, pieced together by ideas of what other’s want and who we have to be to give them that.
Where once we ran with open arms towards the objects of our affection, we now approach them guarded, unsure and afraid of being hurt. To share one’s inner diatribes with another is to risk their disapproval, a seemingly small price to pay for the nirvana of utter honesty, but at once a difficult task if past pain or rejection has colored your ability to carpe diem. If such is the case, the point of fear lives within your own mind oftentimes in congress with the knowledge that, in reality, it matters little what others think.
Still, for some reason, it is a struggle to speak your authentic mind. In this case, therefore, it becomes necessary to make peace with your own inner personhood, to speak to the subtle critic lurking in your own mind and to re-connect with the unafraid and untainted child who lives on in your heart. Once you’ve done that work within yourself, you can open it up to others.
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