Connections, Disconnections

[shadowkat]

Depressed and in a pissy mood this morning- probably due to combination of factors - which I won't bore you with. Suffice it to say it's a bad case of the January uglies combined with the employment situation soon to become the Feburary uglies.

At any rate, feeling the need to cheer myself up and/or distract/amuse myself, I finished up the job hunting chores and wandered about my friends live journal page, the atpo board, and the Angel's soul board. And discovered an interesting theme - the compulsive and very human desire to connect.

There's a lovely essay on the atpo board at the moment, regarding this topic:

http://www.voy.com/14567/2511.html



It's about Buffy season 1's episode I Robot, You Jane. While I've more or less lost interest in BTVS at the moment, this essay drew my attention. It spoke to me. It's about the human need to connect with others.

The human good is never achieved by the following of rules or instructions, no matter what they claim to promote. Human good depends ultimately on a quite illogical recognition of common humanity, on an act of faith in, or consciousness of, shared experience that shows as a revelation that our isolation, our otherness, is an illusion.

This, I think can be proven just by our use of technology to connect with one another. The more we interact with one another online, the more we realize that when it comes down to it - we aren't that different really. Our tasts may differ at times as do the daily workings of our lives, but deep down inside - we do tend to share similar hopes, dreams, desires and fears. We also share a deep need to connect and a fear of being isolated.

I've noticed this tendency in the livejournal entries I read this morning. So many of the posts, struck a chord in me. So many of them reminded me of my own feelings and fears.

We find here a Postmodern spirituality, in which our very identity is no longer an individual trait, no longer an object of knowledge as it was for the humanism of the modern period. Our identity is an active and ever-changing set of real relationships. Again, this appears to me to be one of the most interesting and powerful aspects of Buffy’s spiritual message. I have written before about Buffy’s relationship to kundalini yoga, and argued that the entire series could be envisioned as one person’s seated meditation. And yet Buffy seems to argue that spirituality is not to be found in ascetism. Spiritual fulfillment depends on human interaction, not silent prayer or a penitent soul. Its what we do with each other that marks our spiritual progress, not what we believe or doubt when we are alone. The engage approach to the life of the spirit.

The trick, may be in perserving a balance between our individuality and our connection with others.
When the penduluem swings too far one way or another, we get depressed or over-extended or just feel out of it. We need the connection - why else come online, work hard maintaining difficult relationships, or go to parties we'd rather not go to, when we'd be quite happy sitting in our own little space. Yet at the same time, we need that personal private space to re-energize, to figure out what we are feeling or thinking.

I'm not unconvinced that part of my depression is that I've been sitting on my duff alone in my apartment for two days. I crave the bustle of the work-place. Yet at the same time, part of me is relieved that I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn, to slog my way through snow drifts, ice and cold to get on a subway train with a bunch of equally miserable folks. So to feel connected? I come online - and I read and if I feel up to it? Write a few responses. The posts I've read are oddly reassuring, some amusing, some incredibly sad, others thoughtful, and some just well perplexing. Yet all give me an odd feeling of not being alone. The posts also force me outside of my own head long enough so that I can see life on the other side of the fence isn't necessarily better or easier than my own, just incredibly different, yet also oddly similar. Reading or any type of communication with others - has the ability to pull us out of ourselves for a period time, force us to discover and possibly injest information that comes from an outside source. Make us rethink something in a new way, look at a problem from another angle, see a part of something we may have missed, re-consider something we previously rejected. For these reasons, I think the connections we make through written communication is invaluable.

Comments

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

With all this endless mucky snow I keep trying to imagine what it must of been like in the past when winter really did mean being cut off. Books and letters must have been sanity-preservers. Much like the Alias s1 dvds are the only things keeping my roommate and I from going for each other's throats as we spend yet another night watching the snow fall and cancelling plans.