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Ruminations on disconnection
Aug. 1st, 2015 11:57 pmSome years ago, I was in a production of King Island Christmas - a somewhat idealized yet genuinely touching musical telling of a crisis that happened to a rural Alaskan island in the 1950s, and how the community overcame it.
The music is genuinely good - inspirational without being cloying, up there with the best Disney musicals. Unfortunately, there was only one cast recording made and it doesn't seem to have made it into the digital music stores, or onto YouTube, so I don't have a link or even a lyric reference sheet. But one of the songs, sung by the Oomiak (a walrus-skin boat traditionally used for hunting/transport by many Alaska native tribes, and a pivotal character in the story), remains one of my favorites. Mostly what I remember is the chorus: "Everything must change, it has always been this way/Tomorrow you and I won't be who we are today/It used to make me sad that my walrus life was through/But now I'm feeling glad that I'm doing something new."
It's occurred to me before, often, that our (referring to Western, mostly white culture) attitude toward disconnections - breakups/divorces, rejections, firings/layoffs, deaths - is somewhat incomplete.
In our cultural narrative, we treat social disconnection as a tragic experience to be avoided at all costs. And often it is! But in our focus on the pain in the moment, we so often overlook the other half of the story. Because without destruction, without disconnection, there's no room in our lives for anything new to grow. You can't build a new house without pulling down the old one that's sitting on the foundation. You can't build new friendships if your time is taken up with people you're ambivalent about. You can't find a job you genuinely enjoy if you're working full time at something that's kinda meh.
None of this is to minimize how tough this kind of disconnection can be. Even when it's been a long time coming and you know you'll be better off for it, it's difficult; in cases where it's sudden and traumatic, it can blindside you with the pain. Opportunities for growth always come twinned with times of profound vulnerability; like a crab shedding its shell, someone in a state of disconnection is going to need time to regrow their defenses.
This is why it's so important to reach out to people we care about when they're experiencing disconnection. Yes, it feels awkward, and maybe like you're bothering then when they want to be left alone. Sometimes they may even lash out at you, and in those cases there's often nothing you can do. But being there for someone in crisis, as much as they'll let you; listening to them if they want to talk, or just sitting with them so they don't have to be alone, is a profound thing in itself.
And although I don't have statistics to back it up, I would bet solid money that the quality and timbre of a person's social interactions in such a period have a measurable effect on the quality of the life that they rebuild for themselves.
The music is genuinely good - inspirational without being cloying, up there with the best Disney musicals. Unfortunately, there was only one cast recording made and it doesn't seem to have made it into the digital music stores, or onto YouTube, so I don't have a link or even a lyric reference sheet. But one of the songs, sung by the Oomiak (a walrus-skin boat traditionally used for hunting/transport by many Alaska native tribes, and a pivotal character in the story), remains one of my favorites. Mostly what I remember is the chorus: "Everything must change, it has always been this way/Tomorrow you and I won't be who we are today/It used to make me sad that my walrus life was through/But now I'm feeling glad that I'm doing something new."
It's occurred to me before, often, that our (referring to Western, mostly white culture) attitude toward disconnections - breakups/divorces, rejections, firings/layoffs, deaths - is somewhat incomplete.
In our cultural narrative, we treat social disconnection as a tragic experience to be avoided at all costs. And often it is! But in our focus on the pain in the moment, we so often overlook the other half of the story. Because without destruction, without disconnection, there's no room in our lives for anything new to grow. You can't build a new house without pulling down the old one that's sitting on the foundation. You can't build new friendships if your time is taken up with people you're ambivalent about. You can't find a job you genuinely enjoy if you're working full time at something that's kinda meh.
None of this is to minimize how tough this kind of disconnection can be. Even when it's been a long time coming and you know you'll be better off for it, it's difficult; in cases where it's sudden and traumatic, it can blindside you with the pain. Opportunities for growth always come twinned with times of profound vulnerability; like a crab shedding its shell, someone in a state of disconnection is going to need time to regrow their defenses.
This is why it's so important to reach out to people we care about when they're experiencing disconnection. Yes, it feels awkward, and maybe like you're bothering then when they want to be left alone. Sometimes they may even lash out at you, and in those cases there's often nothing you can do. But being there for someone in crisis, as much as they'll let you; listening to them if they want to talk, or just sitting with them so they don't have to be alone, is a profound thing in itself.
And although I don't have statistics to back it up, I would bet solid money that the quality and timbre of a person's social interactions in such a period have a measurable effect on the quality of the life that they rebuild for themselves.
