The meditation was literally "silent" today, as I was the only attendee for group practice. I was somewhat relieved that I didn't need to lead, since I was feeling a need to simply sit and settle my mind. I valued that experience very much, because I do believe that being comfortable in one's solitude is a very key aspect in being available for others.
I was reading an article today where they interviewed a famous celebrity who later started to become more isolated and secluded as his career was starting to decline. Part of the article was a kind of chicken and egg exploration about why people fall from a place of opportunity to one of seclusion. One key conclusion is that this particular actor had a reputation for being abrasive and difficult to work with, often ending relationships with snide remarks or very cynical put downs. Eventually, as this habit progressed, this actor found himself not getting many offers for jobs, which only exacerbated his sense of being out of touch with the industry and envious of his old fame. While the article and interview paints a dour picture of a man who is too sensitive to criticism yet conveying a "don't give a damn" attitude (a complicated but all-too-human paradox), things get complicated here. Part of this story may very well be, as it is written, a kind of cautionary tale about the effects of creating negative karma. One conclusion is that negative karma isolates people in ways that make it difficult for them to re-enter social circles and contribute to communities or trades. But what I find compelling about this article is that there always feels like something deeper behind this voluntary or not-so-voluntary seclusion, something that goes beyond karma.
I like to think of it in this way: for the first twenty years of one's working life (if they're lucky), a person learns to establish their name and identity as someone who is competent in certain areas. I know lots of people in my workplace who are the "designated something", whether it's the Excel expert or the person who knows how to remove paper jams, or the English wiz, etc. Part of the process of becoming a fully functioning, connected and social person is this apprenticeship period where we try to demonstrate as best as we can (under the circumstances) to prove our values and worth to others. This is an extremely important phase in life, and I believe that failing to achieve a certain felt sense of value in a community can result in all sorts of mental turmoils in later life, including depression or being haunted by self-esteem or fear. But as a person starts to reach a certain age, they might realize that what they have achieved is now being sought by others who happen to be younger than them and in just as much need of validation and recognition as themselves. At that time, the older person needs to make room for the up and coming generation, and might even start to feel themselves being squeezed out by newer organizational cultures. The way a company or business is run in one generation will be drastically different from another simply because technologies change, our education changes, and our ideas change as well. It's no wonder that sometimes a person who made her or his way to the top of a certain career might feel confused or befuddled when the things that made them successful in one generation are no longer guarantees of success in the present.
Sometimes, to go back to my earlier example, I have a feeling that when people find themselves more isolated than before, it's not just because of the social circumstances or because of faulty decisions which derail them. While I do believe that these two factors do contribute to decline or alienation, I also have another hypothesis: namely, whatever we build up in life always has a polar opposite within. If I am a very brilliant scientist, for example, my polar opposite might be a person driven by the arts instead of scientific methodology. When I devote myself to one kind of success, another part of me gets suppressed or even bent out of shape. I wonder if sometimes the rage a person might feel when their career is being sidelined is really the expression of a suppressed energy in themselves that never had the chance to be expressed, due to fear of losing one's place in the pecking order. As soon as that pecking order starts to disappear or we find ourselves falling, all that suppressed energy gets expressed as anger. The anger is not necessarily a reaction to something in the environment, such as getting fired or being replaced by someone else. Rather, it's the expression of a disowned self that is not developed precisely because a person is devoting themselves to one way of being. Because that self has suffered so much disuse, its expressions are often awkward, socially inept or even inarticulate.
I can't help but attribute this famous actor's incoherence to the expression of a part of himself he was never allowed to express and never practiced expressing, because the social milieu would not allow it, and would not accept him or forgive him for it either. It seems important in these troubled times for people not to be mocked or jeered because they no longer stand for who they were or were "best known as", but rather to try to see what this new side of themselves is trying to express, however awkwardly or (heaven forbid), differently. This is the time to accept new parts of ourselves that don't fit, as well as to accept unconventional aspects of life rather than trying to pathologize those aspects. How many times do I read news stories where a person's "bad" (read: misunderstood) behavior is attributed to "narcissism"? "Oh, he or she is just so in love with themselves". But when you really reflect on it, most people are deeply in love with their thoughts, views and ideals, even when they pretend that they are being open minded! There has to be a deeper explanation to a person's garrulous behavior besides the obvious labels or classifications. I challenge the culture to look a little deeper when they see someone who appears to be falling by the wayside in life...perhaps even falling into something daring and new.
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