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.
The Little Prince and the Fox 