Entering into my routine, I headed into the local park; an area with trees and grass circled by the hum of passing traffic. It is the ideal place for working, enough simulated nature to keep a mind grounded, while an invisible dome of wifi-internet drifts around, keeping you up to date and in balance with what needs to be done. I come here for the more heavy and difficult aspects of work, where the quietness of a room folds and spins my mind; the abundant ambient noise of pseudo tranquilly gives good horse-blinds for tasks at hand. But on this certain revolution of routine, something changed. As I tapped words into my computer, and punched numbers and formulas into the black and white screen of my calculator, the presence of a man with a thick accent ascended on my workplace, and in words that I assumed as wholesomely funny, the accent asked:
“Would you mind if I invaded your personal space?”
To the left of my own workplace bench sat another, about 10 feet away and completely available. Of course being a poster child for the early 90’s boom of ADD awareness, I knew any distraction available would be a good enough distraction from what waited on the screen in front of me. But being first and foremost a critic of the masses, I instantly envisioned a decline of his request to be a statement into my outer layer city boy side, where any personal space was territory to be fought for. So in a tone of complete sincerity, I welcomed him to the table. No sooner than his quick thank you came, out from the trees and sidewalk sprung the rest of his immediate family. A mother, a mother in law, a wife and a baby came with baskets and blankets, propping them up on the table, and sliding me from the center to the corner end; my legs pressed firmly to the tables wooden supports. The man’s words had spoken the truth; he was here to invade the space that moments before had been taken for granted.
I was put off.
I became squeamish in the unbalance of change, my writing slowing and becoming more pixilated with twice the periods and half the creative leaps as the comfort bubble of the regular diminished. Done were the flat lines of consistent surroundings, which give opportunity for moments of brief silent pause to look up and ponder. Suddenly in my unease and irritated state, I was asked in a monumental and dividing moment a question that separated me.
“Would you like to join us?”
Suddenly I was soaked with shame.
In my place where I carry out the procedures of work; my area where the productive process goes to twist and shove in the familiar, I had in rehearsal drifted to the land of steadiness. The land of customary behavior. The usual, the established, the conventional and time-honored practice of the default effort to have things “Just-So”. Comfort and bliss in Weber’s Iron Cage. An internal Garden of Eden where I can gaze at the forbidden fruit as a muse, but never bite.
Perhaps it’s in an effort to stay sane that we narrow the world to what is directly involved and seen. If we limit the magnitude of life to our own perception, the most menial of events and tasks seem valuable. This is not to say that this manner of thinking is wrong, it just simply is a fact of existence. Forgetting the smallness of the individual and believe our efforts to be the center of the cosmos is the sole reason to survive. Worth in whatever we do no matter how small an accomplishment is a testament to our animal instinct. Look out for number one always. But at what price do we pay to lesser ourselves, and not take on the responsibility of being an ever-increasing species?
Shouldn’t we group together as herds and eat the grass, moving instinctively together so what we take will grow back? Or is the new way of living within the billions of lives only possible through solo acts with an internal audience?
I cannot judge the rest, but in myself I asked: Where had the self-presumed appreciation of the humble every-man gone? The man who happily swims in the small fish-bowl with the other fish, eagerly waiting to be fed?
When had my bubble shrunk and tightened so I could no longer be effective in the presence of variation?
The realization of a fault in ones self is always an easy-come-easy-go epiphany.
But I know that this one has merit worth struggling for. That the binding ways of finding thought only in solitude, both in work and recreation, cause the ego to inflate to the point of blindness, pompousness, and an inability to relate. As a writer or a human being, it would be nothing but shameful to lose yourself into a way of thought-process Darwinism, where the tightness of familiarly is the only way to breathe. To be happy clumped together in dark spaces, broken free from expected and traditional thought and needs. You don’t have to wave and smile at every passing personality, or make small talk with every stranger, just find happiness in what needs to be done within simple human parallel comradery.
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