I told myself I wouldn’t write this weekend, and I knew that was a lie the second I said it. I spent about an hour laying in bed and thinking this morning. I was thinking about an experience I had last night, and really this entire last week. These thoughts continued as I made and ate my breakfast (shoutout to me for eating breakfast for the first time in years…) so here we are. Writing. Dare I say this will be the ideal mix between formal study and emotional exploration? Let’s see how I do.
One week ago, I moved into my first apartment. It’s a tiny little thing, but I’m very thankful to have it. I was recently hired by my university to be a department administrative assistant, meaning I’d be working on campus all summer. To make that easier for the girl who can’t drive, they gave me this little apartment to call home for a while. I put up pictures, stocked the kitchen, and familiarized myself with the light switches, tried making this square feel homey. Coming from a bustling freshman residence hall, the hardest part about this new space is that I’m alone. I had my own room in my previous hall, yes, but just outside my door, I could easily find almost two hundred young spirits. I would spend my days engaging with students and staff alike, sometimes until the early morning hours as my students’ assignments approached the due date and time. So you can imagine how bizarre it is to go from that to this. I work with a handful of people from 8AM to 4PM, though this week I’ve spent a majority of my time alone in a back filing room. Then, at 4PM, I’m on my own. Sometimes it’s peaceful, other times it’s completely uncomfortable. A lot of the time it’s uncomfortable. I’m a relatively introverted person, or so I thought, but recent experiences have me thinking otherwise.
I was invited to join a zoom call last night. I joined a group of people as they welcomed in a restful and rest-filled Friday night to start their weekend. I knew all of one person on the call, and he was leading the whole thing. Being the kind soul he is, he introduced me to everyone as I meekly turned on my camera. My social shyness is often what I mistaken for introverted-ness. I was suddenly immersed in a sea of welcomes, hellos, and smiles. After a full week of professional greetings to my supervisor, these cheerful faces were a delight. For the following hour, I joined a group in song, prayer, and thought. There were jokes about barking dogs and meaningful insights into important texts. The musician in me appreciated the melodies, and the literature geek in me appreciated the analysis. The person in me both needed and loved the community. For the last several months, I’ve been in a period of trying to stay focused on and in the world around me, as opposed to always keeping my eyes locked in an upward, celestial gaze. I try to remind myself of the ground beneath my feet. Well, last night I felt like I was floating just above that ground. I wasn’t exactly soaring through the sky, but for sixty minutes I had about an inch between me and the hard dirt. I felt grounded in something spiritual, as if instead of walking through this Friday night alone, I walked through it with other like-minded individuals. There were obvious real-world connections, but there was also something bigger. Call it floating, call it God, call it community. All I know is it was pretty damn cool.
See here’s how I know I’m not as introverted as I thought: When I finish in certain social settings, and I’m back on my own, I get really sad. That’s how I know that I’ve not only enjoyed my time, but enjoyed my company. After clicking off of last night’s zoom, I got that wave of sadness, that wave of loneliness. Granted, I had sooooo many thoughts running through my brain (when don’t I), but I couldn’t quite shake this feeling of being alone. One of my favorite songs is “Alone But Not Lonely” by Mary Chapin Carpenter. That’s kind of what I’m striving for right now, comfortability in being alone with the recognition that I’m not lonely. So how does a young woman, living solo, with no real social circle(s) achieve this? That’s where the sociological thoughts started. While I don’t have an answer to that question, please join me as we yet again endeavor into Marx, Durkheim, and Weber.
Karl Marx had some interesting thoughts on loneliness, or “alienation”, rather. I found them oddly prevalent to myself. Let’s think about it: How did I get here? How did I reach this point of living completely alone with next to no social connections? There’s really only one answer… work. I’ve spent the last three years burying myself in work, whether professional or academic, and subsequently have epically failed at making friends. In that same vein, it’s a job that has me here over the summer (though my situation is a little more complicated than that). In many ways, work has separated me from everything, and everyone, else. If Marx were here, he might have considered using me as the poster child for his teachings on alienation and labor. In his 1844 text, “Alienated Labor”, Marx explains that the more one works, the more they separate themself from the world in almost all senses. It starts with the separation between laborer and labor. Eventually, the individual working no longer sees themself in that work, they see the product. How often have I buried myself in work so I didn’t have to face myself? Too often. Marx goes on to detail how the laborer then separates themself from not only the means of production, but the means of life (sustenance). I skipped three lunch breaks this week to keep working. He then goes on to detail the separation of the laborer from other laborers. So under Marx’s theories, my working habits explain not only my birdlike eating, but my separation from the world around me. If you look on my instagram page, my bio is two words: certified workaholic. YIKES. When reviewing “Alienated Labor” in class, I felt like Marx and my professor were holding up a mirror to my face. Scary. But as I sit here now, in my empty apartment, I realize just how separated my work has made me. This has reached the ultimate culmination recently. I wake up, I go to work, and when the work day is over, I have no clue what to do with myself. Thus, loneliness.
This loneliness has me thinking a lot about Durkheim’s teachings on solidarity (my most recent Durkheimian obsession). Let’s talk about mechanical solidarity first. We rely on each other based on our professional roles in society. I as an administrative assistant cannot perform your brain surgery. You instead rely on someone else, a brain surgeon. Essentially, that’s the opposite of what Marx argues we see in society. Does my department need me? I guess. Somebody has to do the filing, shredding, and phone calls. But I don’t think they rely on me. Now let’s talk about organic solidarity. I love the idea of organic solidarity, this natural oneness among people. I was reminded of this in part of a prayer I recently learned. Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. The Lord is our God, the Lord is One. This Jewish prayer, the Shema, is traditionally said every day. Further, however, is the beautiful reality that it is seen every day. What I observed on this zoom call last night was the beauty of organic solidarity, of oneness. For a moment, I felt like part of that oneness. So thank you, to both Durkheim and the sweet people on that zoom call, for reminding me that solidarity can in fact be found in society, and that it’s pretty cool.
What was especially neat about this oneness was the diversity found within it. Belief in God or not, belief in prayer or not, technological skill or not, everyone was there, and happily so. It kinda busts Weber’s ideal types, but these people were also listening to the same idea of how we can look at the world, and our role within it. The idea of changing that view, and maybe subsequently changing our role, is sort of hand-in-hand with Weber’s ideologies. I find it interesting that Durkheim’s solidarity and oneness can be linked to Weber’s, all while they contrast each other in these intricate ways. In all honesty, it stumped me. Do I need to change my perspective and/or role as it relates to the world? Should I? Weber addresses the topic of loneliness once in his major text, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. He outlines it as a consequence of particularly Calvinist theology, especially as it relates to predestination and how one lives their life. Do I think my loneliness is the result of predestination to hell and my subsequent requirement to walk through life as one predestined to that hell? No. Does Weber believe this? I sure freaking hope not. Could you imagine living a life believing you’re on an unchangeable, one-way path to eternal damnation? By Weberian standards, then, am I actually lonely? If your head is spinning right now, welcome to the club. That’s where we’ll leave things.
So loneliness is complicated. That’s the big takeaway here. We know what the theorists would say, and now we choose what we would say. I’ve chipped away at this post across about eight hours of my Saturday, and in a lot of ways it has been my form of communication with someone else, with you. Now, “you” may be figurative, but I do see these ramblings as some form of connection to someone else. Whether it be the professor that checks in, the strangers on zoom, or the figurative ”you” of the internet, there is something to be said about connection with others. Anywho… time to contemplate some more thoughts, draft some more posts, and listen to some music before diving back into work (Marx would hate me).
Oh, and if you read my last post about my Spotify playlist, know that it’s already grown by another two songs…
I’ll see ya soon.
Humble Chutzpah 