chicagogypsy

No man is an island. Those immortal words were written by John Donne centuries ago, quoted by many and inspiring to the greats. The full line reads:

‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

I sit and wonder, in a city of three million if maybe he was wrong. The anonymity of the city is infectious. Mistakes and missteps can be swallowed by the crowd and never traced to your person. It is empowering to know that one can remain so hidden by the masses. Although I feel as if I am always been watched in the city, I also feel that I am never seen.

Maybe man should be an island. Modern conveniences that are supposed to bring us together often make distance easier. Instead of hearing a voice on the phone, or meeting in person, the point can come across with a few bars of cold text on a cell.

Man should be an island because he should be strong from within. How often do we get disappointed by people in our lives? How often do we find that truths we knew so concretely weren’t true all along? It’s a long hard lonely road, the island life but at least you know who you can trust, yourself. Surely visitors will come and go but an island you must be.

The more connected we become, the more isolated we remain. Our connections are becoming more superficial as they grow in number. I have 347 friends on the facebook, but would only count on a handful of them to be there when I truly needed them. But I don’t need them, because I am an island. Or at least I am trying to be.

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