The Invisible Audience

Last night in a journal entry, wherein I attempted to sort out what it is that troubles me about Facebook, exactly, I concluded with, "It's the invisible audience we all imagine for our thoughts, sprung to life." Then I started wondering if everyone imagines an invisible audience for their thoughts, and of course turned to Google for the answer. As it turns out, the idea of an "invisible audience" is considered a psychological stage of development that adolescents go through, which accounts for their extreme anxiety over little pimples and the phenomenon of their changing clothes five times before going to a social event: they believe that everyone is as preoccupied with them as they are with themselves.

At first, I was admittedly troubled by the fact that I am 33 years old and still imagine an audience for my thoughts. Surely this indicates some psychological problem or lack of maturity on my part. But the more I read, the more I realized that I do not have the same type of imaginary audience that psychologists talk about when they analyze adolescents. I don't think people are preoccupied with me or spend much time at all thinking about me-- at least, not most people. I would be surprised if they noticed me at all.

My imaginary audience is not constantly looking on with a critical or admiring eye. Rather, I am always formulating my thoughts for the purpose of writing, whether it be a journal entry, Facebook post, blog post or poem. How can anyone write without an audience, real or imaginary? At this point, I haven't even publicized the fact that this blog exists to my friends. They are not the audience. Humanity is. The humanity whose pulse I imagine running through my veins, the universal lot of us, who all live and think and feel in this slice of time. I don't believe I have any really unique experiences; I simply take the time to formulate things that others experience but may leave unsaid, unpackaged. I want to write it down for all of us, for the sake of common awareness, shared experience or at best, deeper living.

Moving Day

A friend of mine recently shared a photograph of his grandson on "moving day," a 4 year old child seated at a small table, looking at a computer screen while surrounded by empty shelves, packed boxes, and the random detritus that hadn't quite yet detached itself from its familiar surroundings-- the stuff that is either so inconsequential or so important as to seem a part of the house until everything else is removed.  The photograph struck me as inexplicably sad and moving-- the child as yet innocent to the passage of time and the way it changes things, oblivious even to the change that is upon him, to the way this very room will remain lodged in a corner of his memory that maybe he will associate with the feeling of home or warmth on a dark, distant day. His awareness is likely just dawning that the seasons change, that even this long, harsh winter will end one day soon. But still that understanding cannot cover this -- despite the obvious correlation in the mind of We Who Have Seen so many things slip away.

Why does it stir me so to see him placid in the face of change? Perhaps it's knowing how deeply big changes wound us all as we wind the anchor up to sail on, and need to learn anew the angle of sunlight and cast of wind that will carry us through the day; knowing that children feel these things but cannot put them to words yet. Perhaps it's just the way he's already learning to stare into the blankness of the computer screen as a distraction from his surroundings. Mostly, though, I think it's the knowledge that this is the beginning of his understanding of the way of the world-- perhaps his first taste of "no more" and "gone" and "forever" and "goodbye."

Landscape With the Fall of Icarus

Bruegel's painting, "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," is often discussed for the way it draws attention to the ordinary work of the peasants in the scene and casts Icarus' tragic plunge into the sea as an inconsequential mishap in the scheme of daily life. But rather than draw a contrast between Icarus' airy exploits and the peasants' earthly endeavors, I think it points up a similarity among them: that the townsfolk, like Icarus, are concerned only with their own affairs. They are all engaged in some kind of labor- plowing, sailing, climbing, fishing. And it is on their own work, their own daily travails, that each one is focused, not because any one's work is more important than another, but because it is for his own lot that each man is responsible. To one is given a field, to another water, to another the skies. And if one should fall in the course of his affairs, be it due to pride or insolence or for striving after a beautiful dream that we condemn only because it could not be realized in the end, so be it. So will we all lay down when our work is done-- either because it is complete, or we are no longer equal to it-- and everyone else will do as they must, as Robert Frost noted when he said said:

No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Jealousy

The only feeling that I fear in myself is jealousy. I don't even think it rightly deserves the title of "feeling." It is a collection of dark forces that masquerades as a feeling. I don't trust it because its irony is too sharp for me, its magic too dark. It has the singular power to create precisely the negative consequences we most fear. It is a portal through which our fears can be brought from the ether of our minds into the arena of daily life. Whenever I stumble across it in myself, I steer clear. I acknowledge it and give it a wide berth. I refuse to pick it up. Most feelings I think are interesting and worth a closer examination. But jealousy is something that, if you even consent to bend over and look at it in curiosity, will draw you in, change you. It is best left untouched, avoided.