No Man Is An Island

 "No man is an island..." the poet John Donne said in those now-immortal words in 1624.

I love his poems. I'm drawn to him because he asked the big questions, he pondered things, he wasn't afraid to be overwhelmed by doubts on occasion. Mr. Donne struggled with the government of his day, the Catholic church and endured more than his share of personal tragedy. I know his poetry wasn't written with a 40-something single woman living at the dawn of the 21st century in mind, yet somehow I relate with him. Lately, I've been in sort of a Donne phase. I just can't seem to get enough of his words, I love the archaic language, the sense that he has all of the time in the world to spin out his thoughts, the melancholy and the rapture when some idea bursts through his subconscious and he writes as one enthralled, possessed with the need to commit it to verse.

This happens in my life quite frequently. I go through these phases of time when some particular artist captures or calls out to me based on some circumstance of my life. Several years ago, I went through a painful breakup and I remember it was the composer, Franz Schubert that was my security blanket. I had at the time, an impressive collection of classical music CD's and for some reason, maybe liking the look of his picture on the jewel case, heaven knows why, from amongst all of the Romantic composers, I selected the Schubert and he stayed on repeat as I cathartically cried, shouted, huddled cocoon-like in a blanket and generally spent myself over a period of some weeks, I don't know, feeling my feelings, I guess. To this day, when I hear Schubert, it's as if some balm has been liberally poured over my soul. I'll always be grateful for the comfort his compositions afforded me when I really needed it.

A few years before that, after a particularly hideous disagreement with my mother and sister and the resulting year or so of non-speaking terms, it was Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" that occupied the repeat on my CD player. The song made sense to me. I realize that the lyrics suggest casual drug-use more than anything and that is the antithesis of my personality but it was the sense that I at the time was in fact, comfortably numb. I wanted to be numb. I was so tired of caring, trying to make things work, being an eternal 'fixer', it was at this stage of my life that I decided to quit fixing and just be numb, no more pain, no more trying. Nothing...numb.

Which brings me back to the Donne. I'm going through some stuff. Call it a delayed adolescence or maybe the true realization that no man really is an island. I've always been such a solitary creature. So when you do get social and put yourself out there more, for me there is the resultant sense of wariness, uneasiness. Then sometimes there are little heartbreaks when you feel you've been marginalized or overlooked. Sometimes I think that perhaps I'm too awkward or anachronistic to ever really 'fit in' to a society and while I'm quite content with my own company sometimes I long for that of others, but I don't know exactly how to relate to them. Unlovable, outcast and I guess maybe flat undesirable is what I've felt.

Donne's poems have been that balm my soul needs. He knew about heartbreak and loneliness, and questioning. I've never been agonized by non-belief. I know that the God in whom I place my trust and belief is for me, however the organized church has been a constant source of disappointment and distrust. I don't even want to get started on government and social issues, yet that is another source of heartbreak and breaking of trust.

Life was easier when I was numb, when I was that island unto myself, listening to Schubert and not caring about the greater world beyond that of my own reach. So what now...

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."