SYW: The Lonely Guardian

Each of us is lonely in some way. Even when we are surrounded by friends, family, acquaintances, supporters, and colleagues, and are constantly caught up in social activities. There’s a loneliness within. What’s the purpose of the feeling?

To me, it feels as though one purpose of loneliness is to guard individuality. To keep us separate no matter how much we merge and become one with others. To show us our individual role in the whole.

The concept of loneliness has been on my mind. Whenever I contemplate something, I tend to see it everywhere, in everything and everyone around me. What is within us, what we focus upon, is reflected back at us, the world is our mirror.

This morning I noticed that Google’s homepage daily banner was announcing the celebration of the 30th anniversary since the World Wide Web was born.

“In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words.

I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it’s related to, and how it’s related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything.

There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.”

– Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web (1999)

In the news there was an article about Sir Tim Berners-Lee sharing his thoughts on his brainchild now that it is an adult and lives a life of its own.

The headline was typically clickbait tabloid – The end of the world is nigh! Read all about it. That kind of headline is one of the things which Sir Tim was bemoaning and highlighting as a factor in the “downward plunge to a dysfunctional future” of the internet.

In the photograph of him which which was used, he looked defeated. He’s still fighting to save his child from human darkness, but his fight seems to lack the vibrant energy which it used to have.

He sounded like a lonely guardian who shared a treasure, his individual spark, with the world, the collective, to make it a better place, and look at what we did with it.

We’ve turned it into a playground for our greed, lust, envy, avarice, misery, depression, anxiety, fears, insecurity, hate, vitriol, and so on. But we keep hoping to find hope in here somewhere.

As Sir Tim pointed out, hope for the world wide wide is within each of us, the users. We each hold within us a fragment of a greater hope, and we have to come together, join our fragments and forces, and create the bigger, better, brighter future which we envision… but keep expecting someone else to create and safeguard for us.

We have to be and become what we’re looking for in others.

Who Are You – Sam Kim (OST – Goblin)

Of course all of those previous words grouped together to form a thought expressed in cyber ink on cyber paper in a post on a blog online… is just my perspective and interpretation, viewed from the angle of attention focused upon the concept of loneliness.

It’s a conversation with the world outside of me reflecting a conversation that is going on within me.

Which leads me to…

Melanie of Sparks From A Combustible Mind’s Share Your World 3-11-19

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Hello, and welcome to Misfit Club!*

[*reference to this post – Hello and Welcome to Misfit Club]

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

My life circa 1990/1.

There was no one I could turn to for help, no one to reach out to, no one who could reach me, no one to trust, no one to talk to, no one to listen, no one to see, no one who gave a shit about me. I was utterly alone yet surrounded by people. I was unseen yet constantly watched.

That was how it had always been since childhood, but I’d had myself before – during that period I didn’t have myself either.

There was no place to call home. There was no one inside. I was an empty shell, and the surface was cracking, crumbling, turning to dust.

What do you think about when you’re alone in your car?

I don’t have a car.

How would you rate your memory?

Memory rating: E*

[*for Elephant]

While I am an airhead, spend a lot of time spaced-out, and would probably leave my head in the back of a taxi if said head was not attached to body… once something finally gets into the pink labyrinth, it tends to never find its way out again.

However accessing the information can be tricky, not unlike trying to find something on the world wide web using a search engine – you have to input the correct search term, including “- this” when you don’t want those results to clutter up what you retrieve.

Haha! My internet connection went into meltdown as I was writing this segment. I had to reboot the box and then wait for what felt like an age, alone, in silence.

What’s one song that always cheers you up, no matter how blue you’re feeling?

I don’t try to cheer myself up when feeling blue.

I usually listen to music which goes with the feeling, emotion, and mood. A sound which enhances, expands, expresses and explains it. Indulging it to connect with the narrative within it and release it.

If I find the perfect tune to go with the feeling, that often cheers it up because it feels understood by its feeler.

Emotions are excellent stimuli for accessing memories.

I can detach easily, and all the memories pertaining to that story get blocked for the period of detachment. While this can be a useful skill, it also has many drawbacks, and to heal what is hurting it is best to be attached to it, sink into it, swim in it to find the treasures in the deep. There’s a spark in the dark of the wound.

This is one which has cheered up my blues by capturing the mood:

S.O.B – Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

That one goes with those blues which come on when everything you did to change for the better just blew up in your face and you’re back at square one… and you’re wondering why you bothered, why not just give up, give in, and enjoy the mess that is you and your life instead.

Sometimes being a miserable s.o.b is exactly who and what you need to be, and trying to be someone, something, else is not who and what you need to be.

Did I forget anything?

Does it matter if I did?