Alone…

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

The title of this page was written days ago and has been staring back at me from the screen on my desk and in my mind ever since.

What kinds of things are invoked when we hear or see or think that word? All-one? Solitude? What textures or qualities simmer to the surface?

When I cast the spelling into the title field of this piece, I was sitting in bed where I have not much facility to write, but generally just enough capacity to make a note to return to something later.

In that moment, experiencing limited reach, the construct was not far from loneliness — a sense of being distant or disconnected from others, from community, invisible or obscure, perhaps even lost.

Even now, as this word returns and the mind re-creates the memory, I find myself wondering what fidelity exists in this moment to that one. Where might I be pushing in too far to a construct, or glancing off the edge and missing the heart of what sentiment was alive in that instance.

In truth I know that it did have something to do with feeling challenged, in meaningful ways effectively ostracized from the tribe, cut off from the caring capacities and reciprocity of my culture (or place) at large.

In any culture, or tribe, or collective context, I think there are probably a fairly large percentage of members, participants, individuals, who feel “not quite a perfect fit.” I imagine that most of us at one time or another knows something of this feeling, even if we might be able simply to tuck it quickly behind some distraction and carry-on… “Everything’s fine. :-)”

Nonetheless, I think it is this grain of “mis-fit” that keeps any of these natural collectives just a little un-easy and therefore more agile, dynamic, and suitable for evolution within their own larger container… Evolving turtles all the way down…

So perhaps there is a living tension here in this “alone and all-one,” a vital service to livelihood, creativity, and decay.

Alone or all one? Inhale and exhale? Co-arising, always present, one within the other?

But I digress. Maybe.

For most of this lifetime, in the world and culture I have known, I have been not just out-of-the-box, but distinctly an outlier, often even far afield. This condition of “not quite fit” has made up one of the primary lenses of a journey I have led through this life.

From attending “alternate” grade school, never quite landing firmly in any “high” school (I attended three; boarding, public, and public alternative before “dropping out,”) and avoiding altogether our formal structures of “higher education” (I almost did go here,) the initial path of cultural integration (indoctrination) into the mainstream never quite landed, for me, underfoot.

Rather than career and family, my path lead instead through mystical inquiry and a deepening sense of fealty to all sentient beings, indeed, fealty to liveliness itself, whether it lives within animate, inanimate, or beyond matter altogether… Far afield indeed.

At one turn, this journey led to a full stop as the truck I was driving blew a tire and tumbled from the road. Two others died there and perhaps, in a way, so did I. Near Death Experience, I think they call them. For me, infinite darkness, a point of illumination, I present in body, also present the question: to return to life or to stop, the answer uneventful, plain, life. Two others died there, I and one other lived on.

Far afield or perfectly at home?

But I digress.… I think.

Everything’s fine. Really. We are certainly not alone at birth; if that was death, I did not feel alone there either. Any of the great wisdom traditions will tell us this, that we are always together, a part of something larger — even the secular view that we basically do not even really exist, just some epiphenomenon of a particular configuration of matter held together for a fleeting moment, leaves us not alone, but a part of something larger…

But back to the feeling of fit. In some cosmic sense, perhaps we are all where we belong, perhaps where God wants us, perhaps there is no such thing as mis-fit, only divine perfection. And yet we relate; we dance, we pray, we eat, defecate, love, argue, struggle, survive, and pass away… All of this with some texture, some varying degrees of facility and friction, some sense of fit… Or not.

For many years after the crash, my life changed from one whose fit was largely rebel playboy, or ascetic renunciate, to a ward of the litigious financial state. Rather than by momentary wit or service, my livelihood, my material sense fit with culture and society, became an artifact of a product liability and personal injury suit based on the structures of business as usual in the modern world.

But I digress… What I am attempting to reference here is but one of the many constructed ways in which an individual coexists within their larger container; what processes and fluencies arise in culture to attend to and keep bringing along the individuals which are the parts of that society’s constituency over time.

At this particular stone in the path of my unfolding journey, I find myself called to account in material ways for the threshold of this self/collective dynamic, my culture asking implicitly, what will you do to be recognized, to participate in the reciprocity that sustains you and that which you love here in this world?

It appears, in a sense, a later iteration, once again on a developmental trajectory echoing the place before, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Like that small child, peering into the vastness of a world growing into focus before them, the world in my eyes today is dazzling, bright lights and shadows, visions of ground and cloud and water, and which is which and how do I move on and among them, still subject to much discovery to come.

In the best of circumstances, these questions asked of the young might inspire and encourage an enthusiastic vision, clarity and refinement of effort. In other contexts, those questions of fit begin to wriggle in the mind raising more questions than answers.

For me, longer lived in this body that I was once that child, I think perhaps a bit of both. There is a puzzle, both secular and mystical, what efforts must I make, where is the illusion of control?

Alone… Me and words and story, where is grace and where solipsistic denial? What is the call, what scent denotes the path? What light do I reflect?

Our world today is a mass of uncertainty, economies, nations, continuity of community, the biosphere itself. While the vicissitudes of my own personal journey certainly highlight the question, I find myself wondering just how many of us, either consciously or just beneath the surface, are feeling that “sense of fit” a little unstable, a sense of loneliness perhaps by ourselves, or in our little knit units of family or close friendships, that pits us against this larger rolling context?

How many of us are feeling alone in the face of something seemingly so vast, powerful, and complex, that we are either fumbling for some sense of footing, or just walking forward, a bit in a daze, mumbling, “everything’s fine…” And if this number is not few, what might I offer from my own reflections on how we might respond?

For now I have found some solice in storytelling. Writing, such as this, or this, is a start. Also, personal letters written to friends and extended community; listening for what returns and responding; seems to help. I have also begun to dialogue, both in person and through our marvelous communications technologies, to share the humility of my story, and to listen for and into the stories of others.

From that latter bit I hope to generate some recorded artifacts that might travel further beyond those close bands and family and near friends, as I think our stories do have and will play a great role in our journey through these uncertain times.

What do you think? What stories are important to you? Are you feeling alone, or are you looking through that lens from the other side?

Thank you for now, for being here with me, in this moment we are together.