Born to Die, part twenty-seven

While I will never be accused of being a social butterfly, I don’t want to be alone. Depending on how it is defined, I suppose that I could go so far as to say that I’m afraid of being alone. This does not mean that I do not deeply value solitude (which I do) because it is always in the context of not actively, personally relating to another as opposed to being absolutely isolated. In the relative sense I am always relating to something, and this understanding begins to shed some light on the yin and yang of it all. So long as I experience my self, it is always in relation to something else. My study of theology leads me to believe that all of the great faith traditions have this in common: there is always a transcendent Other. Even in my most arrogant, conceited thinking I cannot take credit for having created myself or anything around me. Oh yes, I can witness the constructive—or destructive—use of the raw materials, but the wisest, most intelligent person on Earth cannot honestly say how the whole thing began, only that it did. Metaphysics refers to this as First Cause, what Ernest Holmes called the thing Itself. If my fear of death and my subsequent attempts to avoid it are grounded in not wanting to be genuinely alone, my first step past such thinking is to recognize that it is impossible to ever be alone. Again, alone equals nothing and that just can’t be because there has been, is, and always will be Something.