How to Be Alone

As we know, we humans are generally social creatures, deriving a large portion of our happiness from interaction with others of our kind.  However, we are also by definition individuals, who obtain our identity from within.  Thus is born the continuum between extrovert on one hand and introvert on the other.  For some strange reason, we are, generally speaking, much more comfortable with the first end of this scale than the second.

Take this weekend, for example.  A fine weekend indeed, and spent almost entirely at home with Zekey and Ysa.  Highlights included finishing up a short video that I'd been working on, reading a bit, making black bean chili, editing some photographs, and chatting with Jane and a few friends in the States on Facebook and Skype.  The kids played inside most of the day Saturday, half by themselves, and half with a (very loud) young friend who came over for a three hour long match of... Jedi knights?  Ultraman?  In any case, something involving a lot of swords and yelling, in (to me) nearly incomprehensible Chinese.

Sunday, more of the same in the morning, followed by an afternoon following the kids on their bikes as we went first to the exercise park (a small plaza fitted with generically dangerous clunky metal workout equipment that passes for our playground) and then to the paved lot in front of the elementary school, where I watched the kids interact with a streaming succession of friends, older schoolmates, friends' parents, giggling college girls trying to get them to pose for pictures on their cell phones, gaping grandparents who had never seen a foreigner before - still! after us being here for two years!! - trying to push their two year olds into playing with Ysa, who now knows how to deal with such behavior by a simple humph! and a turning away that is just charming enough not to be offensive...

Aaanyway, my point in all this is that, through all this, I don't think I had a face to face interaction with an adult that lasted more than ten minutes.  And was fine about it.  (Notice the obligatory disclaimer.  You see what I mean about us humans feeling much less comfortable with the introverted end of the spectrum, right?) 

All of this a long, round-about intro to this video, which, now that I've gone on for a while, really speaks for itself:



A good reminder that no matter where we travel, the most comfortable, and the most challenging place to live is inside your own skin.