I am alone here, next to you

My roommates and I went out to eat dinner. We gorged ourselves, had a couple of drinks, chatted for about two hours, and then drove through the cold back home. All in all it as a nice little evening.

Content on food, drink and good company we shared in the general sense of well-being which sneaks up onto us in the slow moments of our busy lives. Then something interesting happened: one roommate vanished into her room to watch T.V.; I sat in a corner reading a book and listening to my iPod; my other roommate sat on the couch directly across from me and watched episodes of Friends on her lap top. When one would say something to the other, she/I would sigh, pause the media player or take out the ear buds and wait patiently for the person to say what he/she wanted. We would nod and resume what we were doing.

I recount this story because the feeling of closeness and contentment with each other became isolated and insular as technology allowed us to individualize what we encountered in the same room. A distance was created and was expanded because of our ability to turn inward. We didn’t agree on what to do together so we did our own things. Earlier compromises devolved into buying our own types of beer and supplying our own type of entertainment.

Of course I exaggerate a tad. Part of what made us able to do this is our intimacy as friends allows us to enjoy each other’s company without interaction. The mere presence of the others, their just being-there, is all we need. But when I looked up from my book I couldn’t help thinking about all the amenities of modern life which are continuously creating an insular and narrow “me”-focused interaction, interpretation, and engagement with the world and others. I think of the people who listen to iPods while talking, or those who sit in rooms together on the net conversing digitally with others while not conversing with the person next to them. It creates the sense that if I don’t like what I am doing now I will just create my own reality.

Do these technologies, while creating more avenues of communication, change completely the understanding of the vocation of community? Has it changed our frame of mind from “I exist with and for others” to “others exist for me”? Where the first means compromise, tolerance, acceptance, and hard work, the other is expediency, individualism, and the ability to pick and choose who you regard as part of your community and what you will do with them.

Food for thought.