Walking The Dog
On my walk this morning I witnessed a retriever defrocking a neighbor. It took hold of the woman’s overcoat belt that was flapping in the wind. A man had hold of the leash. It was something akin to a chain of preschoolers all holding hands at a crosswalk.
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The Beatles famous Eleanor Rigby’s poignant question “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?” got me to thinking. Reflecting, I suppose.
For starters, I’m not an existentialist. They believed the lonely journey of the soul begins once the umbilical cord is cut and ends in death - and there is nothing to be done about it except to endure. To make as much sense as you can of life in between.
I’m quite opposed to this sense to life. Yet there are a lot of lonely people out there, and for quite a while I was one. My loss of the professional me became something of an ending. I retreated.
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“Always the struggle of the human soul is to break through the barriers of silence and distance into companionship. Friendship, lust, love, art, religion - we rush into them pleading, fighting, clamoring for the touch of spirit laid against our spirit.” (Don Marquis)
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Does anyone think loneliness is on the increase? In these modern times with text messaging and “social” sites predominating (at least for those on the younger end of things), the irony is an enormous, huge, seemingly insurmountable gulf of deep friendships where “you can think aloud.” Watching television, surfing the internet or reading are all reinforcing of self. It isn’t face-to-face contact. What’s more, it tends to perpetuate the feeling that it’s all happening out there, for others. It is putting the secondary and distant in front of the primary and near.
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The online community is such a strange box of chocolates, don’t you think? There’s a surprise in every single layer!
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Remember the classic tale of the truck caught under the overpass. The adults are all talking, trying to figure out how to get the truck unstuck. One suggests a tow truck, another thinks it’s obviously a matter of unloading the back. A little boy walks up, listens for a while, then asks: ‘Why don’t you just let the air out of the tires?’
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I imagine that when an existentialist looks up at the night sky they see something chilly, a revulsion of despair at the unfathomable emptiness of space.
For me, it’s all a wonder. I can feel a connectedness that eludes my eyes during daylight.
You can live your life in one of two ways: As if everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
I prefer to think that Eleanor Rigby was at peace with being alone, after reflection. For when she went out to look at the night sky, it replied.
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Take a walk, whether in the city or the country. Look at the brightly painted doors, church spires and shops, or at the wind playing in the grass, the cacophony of life humming around you - and feel the complexity of the small part of the world that your legs can carry you.
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(Note to self: Get a dog. Take a walk. The windier the better.)