The Little Prince and the Fox

Once again, I find myself at a loss for words, at least for my own words — today I just find myself with raw, intense, overwhelming emotions and a particular song of one of my favorite musicians (Bruce Springsteen) ringing in my ears: “Human touch”.

So here go the lyrics that particularly resonate with me (due to a situation in which I’ve found myself) lately:

“You and me we were the pretenders 

We let it all slip away 

In the end what you don’t surrender 

Well the world just strips away

Boy ain’t no kindness in the face of strangers 

Ain’t gonna find no miracles here 

Well you can wait on your blessings darlin’ 

But I got a deal for you right here

I ain’t looking for prayers or pity 

I ain’t coming’ ‘round searching’ for a crutch 

I just want someone to talk to 

And a little of that human touch 

Just a little of that human touch

…

Oh boy that feeling of safety you prize 

Well it comes with a hard hard price 

You can’t shut off the risk and pain 

Without losin’ the love that remains

We’re all riders on this train 

So you been broken and you been hurt 

Show me somebody who ain’t 

…  

You might need somethin’ to hold on to 

When all the answers they don’t amount to much 

Somebody that you can just talk to 

And a little of that human touch”

Do foxes go into — and therefore come out of — hibernation? If so, in springtime I’m definitely more like the little wild fox seeking friends to play with —  feeling pretty restless myself and hardly able to focus on work or “duties”! 

I guess I’m more like the Little Prince, roaming and exploring by myself, in the summertime, when I can take time off and travel on the road and/or in nature, when I don’t mind being on my own and interacting with other fellow explorers on the road. 

But now, in springtime, every springtime, I feel like I’m coming alive again and would like to share this “aliveliness” in a playful way, sharing more joy.

This is one of my favorite “tea-tag” quotes and I always try to live accordingly, but I’m realizing that it’s not always as easy as I though it would be…

Recently, I’ve often been saying that I’m “discovering my identity” and “finding my voice”, using the two phrases almost interchangeably. But it just hit me tonight, how these are actually two very different things, at least in my own experience. I’ve truly always known “my identity”, it’s always been instinctively clear to me who I am, what I love, what my dreams are; and that instinctive knowledge has often led me even in the darkest moments of confusion or fear, even when I didn’t know why I was doing something or where it would take me next. But only recently have I started to “voice my identity” or to “find my voice”. Only recently have I come to realize that knowing, or at least sensing, who we are or what we want can still be a far cry from being able to accept ourselves & our dreams as they are; and often an even farther cry from being able to say out loud, “this is who I am, this is what I want/need/dream of”, because too often we fear that we won’t be heard or accepted or respected by those around us. 

Many times, and by many people, I’ve been told that I am “brave”, even “nuts” or “wild” or “fearless”: and in general I think that’s true, I identify with that description of myself. But recently I have often been feeling that “finding my voice” or “voicing my identity” is requiring far more courage from me than any of the many wild, reckless things I usually do!

Yesterday I watched the movie “The Glorias” about Gloria Steinem and the Women’s Liberation movement. 

Apart from loving the film, I really resonated with two quotes of Gloria Steinem’s, so I’ll share them again here:

On instinct: “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, but you think it’s a pig … it’s a pig.” 

On truth: “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off!”

[Belated Happy Birthday, Gloria, and thanks for what you and all the people involved in similar activism have been doing to make this world a better place!]

I miss having fun, especially shared fun: this is one of the great tolls this pandemic is taking on me — and maybe on other “singles” or “loners” like me. 

Joy, excitement, enjoyment, play (on my own as well as shared, in company) have always been very important to me, to my well-being — although, I admit, for great parts of my life I have given far too little time or importance to fun/enjoyment, especially to cultivating ways of sharing the fun with others. And some of this is coming back and biting me in the butt now. This pandemic is probably limiting or reducing the possibilities for fun/enjoyment/play for many, if not most, people. But it seems to me that I’m feeling this loss in my current life in an extremely sharp way because I hadn’t built “solid enough ties” with any specific group or community of “shared fun” to somehow last or weather the pandemic: with the current restrictions and limitations on the number and ways that we can safely interact with each other, people are instinctively spending time, including “fun time”, only with their closest ones, with their tightly-knit “social bubbles”. Although before the pandemic I was fortunate to enjoy shared fun in the company of several different “social bubbles”, now I’m not easily included in any of them anymore. And once again, I’m not sure how much of this is caused by my own behaviors or internal conflicts and how much of it is instead due to some bias in our society.   

This might seem like a minor problem, and certainly there are much bigger issues! But I also believe that life without shared joy is alienating and, fundamentally, sad — while joy can be an incredible drive and motivation for so many wonderful things!

As a child and teenager my dream was that when I’d grow up I’d go and live in a big mansion-type house, or complex of bungalows, in nature with all of my closest friends. My dream included the possibility of my friends having spouses and/or nuclear families of their own, it didn’t feel contradictory: we’d all be part of a larger family that would include me, too, even though I never envisioned myself with a life partner or children of my own. 

Now, although I need my own space and often plenty of “quiet time” by myself, and although I’ve roamed and moved a lot, this image still represents an ideal that I have and hope might come true some day…

I cannot say that I’m the Little Prince or the Fox. I’m both at once: a restless explorer seeking friends across lands and continents, eager to learn continuously; a small wild creature, desirous of finding friends to play with but also wary of cold-hearted hunters. 

Maybe I’m at odds with the world I live in, with its focus on “busyness”, with the value given to work/workaholism; or maybe I just haven’t found the places or communities where I could fit. 

I believe in friendship and freedom, bonding without binding: in deep, meaningful connections and mutual support but without stifling ties. Somehow, though, most of the time I seem to get into situations or relationships where freedom and refusal of rigid ties is interpreted as lack of commitment or lack of care. Maybe this is the “usual old conundrum” of confusing interdependence and independence?!??

So for me this blog is a way to find a voice, find my voice, and hopefully find other voices that resonate with mine, that can harmonize and sing along with mine: a place to safely and respectfully share thoughts and feelings, viewpoints and emotions, experiences and expressions.