It is easier than people think for you to have an opinion when people are listening; contrary to the modern proverb “You can’t even have an opinion anymore.”
I know this because I wanted to be heard for years.
I had been glossed over. I had been forgotten. I had been passed over.
For about 5 or so recent years though I was performing live very regular as performing artist/ musician and in what could be considered a pendulum between a new entertainment extroversion to never before experienced levels and on the flip side semi extreme hermitism.
Then in comes the pandemic and I assume the role of a stay at home dad, the multimillion dollar company that used to pump posts about the show I leaded was no longer boosting my content with consistent and gratuitous amounts of ad revenue and that even in cahoots with some of my personal accounts.
The connection of my activity to Facebook translated mysteriously into my person seemingly having value to said algorithm (even if I wasn’t by any means even close to making the type of money the company I worked for was). To all possible intellectualization I could make out however, that the algorithm believed I was famous whether I was much at all. I was noticed somewhat. I was heard. I wasn’t so passed over.
Let me give you one lesson though. Facebook is not censoring you because they do not like you. Facebook just isn’t ‘boosting you’ because you aren’t making them money. At that time I was but now the algorithm believes I am noone, caput, basically a nobody.
This is the sad value testimony of human value in our crapitalist society. Nothing is usually popular in the way it was in ancient Athens.. back when intellectual values, philosophy of ideas and metaphysics were valuable of their own accord and merely for the fact of having mused upon them and nursed them into schools of thought. Now even that value is worthless unless it’s ready to pay the piper. I wonder how much money Facebook wastes not investing in these ideas. But I guess every time a toilet flushes at Walmart a tax deduction angel gets its wings!
So I’m settling in to a more long lasting version of my hermitage but I would be lying if I said that my depression has been totally at bay.
And yet still I’m doing something that some in the medicine/ science only crowd might think muddies the waters into dangerous hippy sentimentalist territory. I’m taking alot of walks in nature, exercising, taking my cbd, eating better, avoiding excessive alcohol or cussing at puppies and of course writing my blog as one part of my weekly healing process.
And you know what .. it helps; because sometimes even after a good helping of protein rich organic peanut butter pancakes.. on a rainy day, when your mind is racing and the sleep disorder demons have clocked out, they need someone to pick up a shift and of course the depression demons are ready and rearing to go. Even so when I write it out it has been transmitted from the realm of thoughts to the realm of words and in my subjective pseudoscientific opinion it seems to help.
I always knew I was an ‘ideas person’. I was always desperate to be stuck in a college academia library studying theology, philosophy, science, physics, social theory (EVERYTHING)!
I have always been mad that whatever secret branch of the government that hires for think tanks hasn’t broke their silence and reached out to me yet. But patience is a virtue after all! Le-sigh.
Re-sign. That’s my miraculous auto predict shake out of writers block! And that’s precisely what I’m getting to now.
The first step to embracing and truly enjoying solitude is getting past the loneliness and just because I’m married doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely when it’s just me and my daughter during the day. Yes.. even with my daughter there I get lonely sometimes and that’s ok even if her just being there really really helps!
You see loneliness is no respecter of persons. And yet perhaps its more helpful and comfortable to be all St. Francis like and call her Sister Loneliness.
Loneliness is like engaging a Jericho wall and sometimes you just got to blast a trumpet in your heart and shake yourself up a little to get past the false barriers it suggests and remember somehow, right now, life is still being lived.
You also must be humble if your’e more the type to be desirous of the hermit lifestyle because whether Pentupium Introvert 5.0 or not you just have to face the music that people aren’t always terrible and in many ways many of them are much better than you… and that’s ok! After all you have your own strengths and weaknesses too!
Most saints probably don’t mantra on that word too much or at the least they think it means something different than most people think it means.
So also a healthy hermit has to be humble and it is as intriguingly intricate as this idiomatic tongue twister.
The healthy hermit is the balance of ones needs and “the Others” needs.. whichever other or Other that may be.
Healthy solitude is a gift for a heart that is healing. It is the opposite of the crusted bitterness of undealt with trauma. The deep irony for he, she or they that seek solitude is this.. one can only seek solitude well as they find a supporting cast.
(A little poem comment I wrote for y’all antimaskers. )
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So the fear of the Lord isn’t an end in itself. Is it fear to avoid hell which is worthy to fear and then say to the sick..go now physician and heal thyself?
Jesus said preach and heal is thy task. Where many words are -sin will not be lacking..so why oh erudite soul wont you please wear a mask?
If the Lord is to fear and the punishments of hell and to heal and to preach is thy mission pray tell..can you not also protect another’s mortal shell?
You know it is written as has been duly known by the beautiful Jewish messiah bethroned that what’s done to the least of these is done to His own.
Therefore if you quibble at a small ethical task …can your master charge you in the big if you can’t wear a mask?
Wear a mask ,wear a mask is all that they ask during pandemic plagues do the wise “cancel’ that?
Elephants work for peanuts and GOPple them fast..if it could save some one you know WHO’d appreciate that…
Most kindly then till the coast clears .. for the least of these “that” will you do them a favor.. wont you please wear a mask?!
This message is approved by James Dillon Broxson. Thank you Kay Ivey for extending the mask mandate and listening to our public health officials. It means the world to us that you are trying your best to put people before politics on this issue. A good and ethical bipartisan and science following move. Legacy comes from doing the right thing over merely following a brand. We appreciate it.
UPDATE { I SPOKE TO FAST… SHE CHANGED THE MASK ORDER TO A CHOICE THING. GOOD GRIEF!!!}
P.S. I’m glad she did the right thing for a while but I guess politicking is an endless pressure. “Shaking my head. “
It probably wasn’t long ago for many of us that we were “making plans and holding hands.” as the late and great Daniel Johnston once said in one of my favorite songs of his, “I save Cigarette Butts”.
Or as it says in that great literary and spiritual Masterpiece the Bible;
“But as the day of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the son of man be.
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matt 24:37- 39 KJV
(Yes I’m Catholic but I have my respects for a lil KJV!)
For all practical appearances it would seem that the Son of Man has indeed come and with considerable shaking of things that seem unshakable. This is not to say all natural disasters are directly from God or something as much as that all natural disasters prove we ‘need’ nature’s God. That need is the ‘final judgement’.
Judgement is a trite title to linchpin culture with just as much as it backfires on those who judge it an effective resort for affairs of cultural exchange.
Personally I would know because I am better at judging most people ‘better’ than most people I know.. at least that’s ‘my judgement’ on the matter.
And so I sit here like a hermit on a hill. I always was one even in my most social of times but that should never be confused with malice or hatred of humanity.
Sure, to the man who is confounded and confused by society it also could be possible to become negatively personally affected. It is not because such an one sees nothing in society as much as sees too much promise wasted in society.
The idealist hermit sits on the hill top judging not because he hates but because he knows the art pieces potential and to the degree he judges in purity rather then in strife he gathers a glimmer of truth if only he would judge with a correct, loving and disaffected judgement.
Looking into the fire makes darkness for the eyes. It doesn’t matter if a fire burns bright. It is easier to see when escaping a fire. Its much easier to see a fire once one is away from it.
Hermits get a bad wrap for evading social responsibility and that is not entirely without rationale. Many hermit temperament people ‘do’ hate society and even for those who don’t the temptation lies at hand.
This is not a value judgement for such individuals. Introversion runs too thick to cheapen it with run of the mill stereotypes. Everyone has their cross to bear. Introverts can be good people but not all introverts are hermits. The hermit might seem related to introversion in many respects and that is a perfectly natural conclusion..
Yet a true hermit is not one because of introversion.
A true hermit is one because of people..for people.
Like a man with a mote in ones eye a man with judgments whether good and bad may just be a man with an artists eye.
The judgments hurt the man with an artists eye because an artists eye can also comprehend beauty in the ugliness just as he sees beauty and ugliness in himself. Thus when you judge the speck in spite of the mote you judge yourself in the process. Somehow miraculously even in spite of the sin grace interrupts. Thank God for interruptions!
The hermit is a benevolent soul if he decides to live his call. He is a leader by serving, though perhaps by a false sense of absence in immature consciousness, whether in himself or according to the perceptions of others.
A man who is trained by a more solitary life must not throw in the towel or merely relax or enjoy the affairs of his solitude.
If anyone would wish to be a hermit I guarantee the universe will crowd them with thoughts. Their silence will be interrupted whether internally or externally.
{The only ‘true’ reason that the hermit may be is because he sees something good in you and in me.}
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Musings of a Picture Frame Conversationalist. 