Alone With Myself

Oriah Mountain Dreamer states as the final verse in her famous poem “The Invitation”:

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

This is a mindmarble I often find myself grappling with and I ask questions like, am I truly enjoying the company I keep? How do I fill my empty moments? Does it matter if anyone else ever knows or observes the fruits of what I do when I’m alone?

I have always possessed a powerful drive to traverse the planet and leave on a moment’s notice. I also have seem to be afflicted with a rabid fear of commitment to anything other than a relationship and have therefore never subscribed to the typical American work week. I acknowledge that I am blessed, and marvel at my ability so far, to avoid the shackles of a full time job. I have been drawn to sporadic jobs where my commitment has a foreseeable end date, flexible on-call work as a Massage Therapist, or jobs that involve short and intense bursts of focused labor like my seasonal work as a commercial salmon fisherwoman in Bristol Bay, Alaska. (Funny that this spell-check doesn’t even accept the word ‘fisherwoman’, as if the dotted red line underscoring the word exemplifies just how rare and unaccepted being a woman in my profession remains.)

All of this is to say that I have had an unconventional relationship with work and time. I have borne witness and the negative consequences of my mother’s 50-80 hour work-weeks, as she was showered with accolades from society for her dedication to the job. I understood, even at that young age, that being a single mother required working a more significant schedule, yet I was noticeably lonely and longed for more quality time with my mum. This is one of the few things today, for which she has regret.  My grandparents on both sides, still healthy and active, continue to put forth the vast majority of their vital life force energy and precious planetary time into their careers, even into their 70s and 80s and look down their nose at my ‘sedentary lifestyle’. One grandma scribed in her card for my 19th birthday, “we can only hope that your choice to become a massage therapist is a step in the direction of pursuing a worthwhile career”.

My only sibling, a younger sister, has also chosen an unconventional life punctuated with significant world travel and a preference for sustainability and living-off-the-land. Yet all her employment experiences have been full time, often in tandem with being a full-time student. My ex-fiancee was applauded for his commitment to working overtime and extending beyond the call of duty at the Monterey Bay Aquarium even when it meant compromising his adrenals and wellbeing. He often complained to me that he had so little time purely for himself.  As I look around me, there seems to be no end of people willing to engage in the standard narrative regarding time and work – that to be a contribution to society one needs to sacrifice the self in service of the whole and that there is more merit in living to work, than working to live.

A welcome result of having mostly had work that allowed me to choose my own schedule is that I have had copious amounts of time to myself, lots of space to be alone and countless empty moments. These have provided great spaciousness for learning, growing, observing and simply being. I revel in languid days of nothingness. It is in those liminal spaces that I come to know and see myself in new ways not resulting from engagement with or reflection from others. Simultaneously, I must admit, where I used to read books, make jewelry, take long moments to loose myself in a painting or write handwritten letters, I now engage with a variety of screens: my MacBook, iPad or brand new iPhone and the occasional movie on my loaner TV.  Is this time productive, life-enhancing, braing-stimulating and emotionally fulfilling? Am I producing anything of worth or being a contribution to the greater world? I have come to see that much of the time I spend alone is self-indulgent and lacking in real contributory activity. I’d like to change this and know that I must fight the habituated responses I have to being alone.

The people who seem to have the greatest sense of fulfillment in life are thoroughly engaged with their communities and are offering themselves so selflessly in meaningful and tangible ways. I don’t see my time with myself as selfish, but I would like to spend a higher percentage of my vital life force energy and precious time giving back to this beautiful planet that has given me such insurmountable beauty and wonder. I want to be of service, to bring more love into people’s hearts, to shine my light bright and true – especially in the dark places, to inspire creative expression and healthy communication and offer my inherent gifts in ways that are well received and powerfully impacting in positive ways. Perhaps then, when I am alone with myself (which would probably be a lot less),  I will be able to truly like the company I keep.

 

 

How do you spend your time with yourself? Do you prefer to be alone or with others? Do you like the company you keep?