When I first returned to the United States, as a fifteen year-old girl, having lived my entire life as an American abroad, I came face-to-face with the ugly monster of Alienation. I didn’t fit in, I didn’t belong. I was a fish out of water.
I felt isolated and alone. Mostly, I felt hopeless—as if nothing I could do would make any sort of difference, would connect me with anyone or anything of meaning or substance, so what was the use of trying?
What did make me feel plugged in and alive and worthwhile, however, was singing or listening to music. Which I did, endlessly, in my basement. My guitar and my stereo were my ticket in—to my soul, to my feelings—and then my ticket out—to my community, my tribe, my friends.
“Music heals the soul and moves the spirit,” says Amy Tappe. Well, ain’t that the truth. When I listened to Janis Ian sing about feeling alienated and alone in “At Seventeen” there, in the bowels of my basement in Canton, Massachusetts, I felt alive, seen and understood. Her words, and her music, reached out and into me. Music, in fact, was what drew me out of my shell, out of my head, out of my isolation and into the warm and wacky world of theatre in Junior High and High school. Music was my saving grace. It pulled me out of myself and into the warm and loving of community of other like-minded kids who also felt alienated and alone, misunderstood and lonely. Bound together by our love for music and, tangentially, for performing, we created community—a family, really. United by a single cause—Get the play on its feet, opening night is around the corner!!!—we laughed and struggled together, discovering our commonalities and respecting our foibles, our uniqueness.
I learned something powerful at that early age: Even in the face of deep, dark feelings of alienation and isolation, if I could make the choice to take action and involve myself in something meaningful and share it with loving people, that feeling of not belonging, of alienation, would lessen.
“People want lives wherein everyone is a friendly relative, and no act or object is without holiness.” (When the reverse happens), “we feel like a fish out of water.” Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said those words.
Accepting myself for who I am, and then sharing myself, my heart, my abilities, with other people, I felt—and still feel—more like a leaping, joyous dolphin in a school of leaping joyous dolphin than a fish out of water.
And so, when I watch my teenage stepsons slouch around, bored, living for the TV set, content with doing as little as possible, locked in the belief that “it’s all useless anyway, so why bother, what’s the point,” it breaks my heart. I feel their sense of hopelessness like a shroud on my own heart. What is it that makes many of our young kids feel so hopeless, so alienated? Is it because our families have gotten so much smaller? Or because we move around so much more? Is it because friends and family are more disposable, coming and going and coming and going? Is it because they are often left alone, with little to do but to kick around and become as one with the TV set or other, more insidious addictions?
Whatever the reasons, many of our children are kicking listlessly on the edge of hopelessness and alienation. It’s reflected, for example, in the abysmal voting turnout among our youth. How can we help them to understand that, just by their mere presence, they are worthy and important; and that their actions, their choices are vital and significant—that they and “it,” whatever “it” is, does matter. How can we convey to them what Dr. Martin Luther King said so eloquently: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” How can we help our children to care; to step out from the listless shadows and leap into vibrant connection with themselves, their fellow human beings, and the greater world around them?
I look back to my childhood, and those tumultuous teenage years, and I remember that it took magic to make me care, to make my passions kick, to muster my will to take action, to want to make a difference…the magic of music, the magic of theatre. My hope is that each and every one of our children, each and every one of us, at any age, can find and then fan into a roaring flame their particular magic, the fire that sets them in motion and makes them take action for themselves but, most especially, for others. Because, as Albert Einstein said, “Only a life lived for others is worth living.”
I used the word WILL in that last paragraph. WILL. Our will is a powerful thing. In order to take on problems, rather than running away from them, it requires WILL. In order to move from a place of isolation and alienatation, it requires WILL.
George C. Boeree says: “Will is pulling aside present distress in order to reach future delight—or staying hopeful, even eager in the face of anxiety. Or taking on problems with the intentions of solving them.”
So WILL is the key. It takes will to make a choice and then take action on it. It takes will to decide to stop settling for being on the fringe and to not only ask more of yourself but to ACT on that decision.
Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.”
Passionately curious! Isn’t that a wonderful phrase? Let’s encourage ourselves to be passionately curious—about ourselves, about each other. If we can muster the WILL to become passionately curious, we will find ourselves moving together, working together, our hearts and souls engaged and on fire with life. And those feelings of alienation won’t stand a chance.
As Lucy Larcom so beautiful suggested: “If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.”
And that’s why I’m here today, to warm the coldness of this world with the fire in my heart and soul, through my words and my music.
Source: “Alienation” (Eleni Kelakos)
