Published on 12, July, 2020
This is harping on a very familiar subject, I know. Most of us feel dislocated to a greater or lesser degree. For me, it seems to be accelerating. I've always found 'society' tiresome and exhausting, but have nevertheless always been able to manage as part of it. In the last couple of years, though, I've found it harder and harder to associate with others - even passively. In just the last year, I've retreated even more. I no longer want to be around others, unless it can't be helped.
I suppose getting my diagnosis has played a role in this. Any form of diagnosis, for any condition at all, has an effect on us. The awareness it gives us of certain things will influence our thoughts and behaviour. Of course, it was a relief for me to finally have answers to the questions I'd always asked. At the same time, though, the idea of being different was now firmly planted in my head. As my awareness grew - reinforced by research, and by things I learned from others - so, too, did my sense of difference. It was almost as if I'd previously been a human being, like everyone else - just one who was simply a bit odd. Now, though, it felt more like I was a different species of being altogether. An alien, almost. I was in a culture that made no sense to me. I couldn't read the signs. I didn't understand the language.
Growing older, of course, also has had an effect. The natural 'generational' thing. At 59, I'm old enough to remember times that almost seem like ancient history. London as an affordable place for working people to live. No mass travel (or not on the scale we have it now). Hardly anyone in the road owning a car. High streets full of independent retailers. No fast-food joints everywhere. Phones that were useful communication devices rather than things that controlled our lives. As little as 30 years ago, things were enormously different. And even if they weren't necessarily better times (depending on your criteria), they were in many ways more comprehensible to me. I look around now at the way people are jacked into the system via their devices, and it completely baffles me. I'm the only person at work who doesn't carry a phone with me during working hours. They all think I'm simply eccentric. So nothing has changed there, then! It makes me smile, too. They're all connected to one another - and through that, ironically, disconnected from their surroundings. Whereas I'm connected to my surroundings, but disconnected in other ways!
My colleagues at work are practically the only people (apart from the service users) who I spend a lot of time with now. After work and at weekends, I see no one - apart from when I go to the shops. I like to get to work early - well before everyone else - so that I can settle in. I've always been like that. When the others begin to arrive, we chat, and I'm included. Once the numbers reach about 4 or 5, though, I'm getting marginalised. By 8 or 9, I'm out of it altogether. When I try to join in, I'm quite often ignored. Sometimes, I've noticed, I'll be speaking and not a single person is looking at me at all. This scenario has generally been the case for me, throughout life, in any social situation. So I'm used to it. And it isn't necessarily that I'm disliked. One colleague, whom I've no reason to doubt, told me "Everyone here likes and respects you. I haven't heard anyone say a bad thing about you." Hm. Odd. He said "You're the most interesting person who works here." Really? You could have fooled me!
It makes no sense. And I no longer look for any sense in it, to be honest. I'm happiest just being out of it all. Where I've always been, basically. More so now, though. I used to feel like a moored boat: connected to land, but not really part of it because my natural environment was the water. Now... well, things are shifting. Is the current pulling me out, or is the land falling away? A bit of both, probably. Whatever the case, the ties are loosening.
I think you're feeling nostalgic for the past as you're getting older. And this is natural and quite common.
I only feel it slightly because the past for me was so awful I don't want to experience it again.
I have always been disconnected from the people around me so I don't any different.
I actually like mobile phones. But dislike voice calls. ( I prefer text or email). Since I have cut my phone off from the toxic people who used to phone me very regularly (by changing my number) I feel much healthier. When i go out in the local area I don't take my phone with me. When I do take my phone. It's for internet browsing, GPS mapping, live timetables etc.
The cities I lived in have changed. But I think most of the changes have been for the better. I estimate 30% changes have been bad. 70% for the better. The old shops and markets are gone, replaced by souless shopping centres. The people have changed.
Some places have not changed at all. When I was learning to read I was very into Enid Blyton books. And having a collecting disorder, I actually bought while collections, all 15 secret seven books, 21 Famous five books, 15 mystery series books. At that time (1960s & 1970s) the places being written about seemed complete fiction. I think they were written in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Now in 2015 to 2018. I am traveling around and I feel I am visiting places that remind me of these very books. Many places seem unchanged in a century.
Robert124 said:I actually like mobile phones.
I've nothing against them per se. But it's how mobile technology has changed society. That freaks me out. Not so many years ago, you could go anywhere and see people walking around, taking in the sights, interacting with their immediate environment. Now, you just see people looking at their phones. Today, I went out and got some shopping. Then I came back and went to the beach for a swim. On those trips, I hardly saw a single person who wasn't engaged with a device in their hand. People walking with their dogs or their kids, but looking at their phones. People looking at their phones rather than looking at the sky, or the sea, or the other beautiful things around them. Yesterday, cycling home from work, I took a quiet route that took me along past a river. On the bank, a young couple had set up a picnic blanket under the shade of some bushes. They had two children - a baby in a crib on the blanket, and a toddler of a daughter. The daughter was crawling dangerously close to the river bank, as I noticed when I cycled by. The couple, though, were each engrossed with their phones. As I went past, I called 'Watch the little girl.' The mother looked up in shock, then lurched over to grab at her daughter. They'd both been so engrossed that they hadn't even noticed.
Here's one of my poems:
Everywhere,
people are looking at their phones.
All people do is look at their phones
or hold onto their phones as if their lives
depended on it. People drive cars
looking at their phones. People go
for long walks in beautiful nature,
looking at their phones.
People make love
Maybe they make love
to their phones. People throw parties,
then spend the whole time
People go to church and play
with their phones. People go to concerts
and play with their phones. People go
swimming and take their phones.
They go on jogs with their phones.
Phones have disfigured people –
they clasp them between shoulder
and ear as they carry their shopping or
hold hands with their kids.
Phones have disabled them –
they’ve lost the use of a hand, which
is the hand that is always holding the phone,
and the hand that is no longer any use
for anything else except holding the phone.
People fall down holes
and off buildings
and over cliffs
whilst looking at their phones.
People go to bed and play
with their phones. Maybe they
sleep with their phones.
Maybe they dream about using their phones.
Or maybe they dream about a day
long gone when no one had phones,
or needed them, or wanted them, or cared.
They just went for nice walks instead,
or got quietly drunk, or spoke to other people
face to face, or masturbated
in perfect peace...
It sounds like, from your observations, that many people in this life are currently very dissatisfied with their lives and they’re disconnected from their lives and their surroundings and have sunk into distractions/addictions to help them cope with their lives instead of realising they can change things, that they don’t have to live within the horrible restrictive current way of life, they could change that, but they’re so disconnected from their true selves that they allow themselves to be conditioned to believe they can’t change things and that they have to go to work etc, etc so they think that their greatest chance of survival is to distract themselves. I know that feeling, I used to do this and still do sometimes. People distract themselves when they’re not connected to their true selves and when they’re not connected to their own true self they can’t connect with anybody else, beyond a superficial level so they distract themselves. When I pass people who are clearly in pain, distracting themselves from life in any way they can, I send them silent blessings and pray they find themselves and therefore they find happiness and they have everything they have ever dreamed of in their life. I used to be like them but my distraction was usually drugs. So I can empathise with them, addictions can be very strong and because mobile phone addiction is more acceptable than drug addiction in our society, some people don’t even realise it’s an addiction so they have no way of ever getting out of it, as you can’t treat an addiction if you don’t even know you’ve got one. But maybe it’s their time to be in addiction. I’ve had mine and I appreciate my non addicted life better, so maybe some of us have to experience addiction before we can appreciate freedom.