Both the bluebird and the indigo bunting are elusive birds. I hear them in the woods behind our house, I see their dark silhouettes in the tops of the trees at the edge of our timber, but I rarely have the chance to see them close enough to take in their blue splendor. Still, I crane my neck every time I hear their songs and scan the treeline for any flash of blue.
These are private birds, indeed. Except for the cadet blue of the common Blue Jay, brilliant blue is an anomaly here in the Midwest. Each spring, blue birds and buntings could flaunt their colors amidst the browns, russets, and grays of native birds. They could, but they do not. And this is what makes their allure even more precious. Their privacy is a ten-carat sapphire hidden in a pile of limestone and shale.
In his Notebooks 1951-1959, French philosopher and author Albert Camus writes:
Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but ‘steal’ some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.
Opt for privacy and solitude, neither of which make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. The blue birds and the indigo buntings are poster children for privacy and solitude, and we might do well to take a lesson from them. Perhaps our unwillingness to do so stems from a belief (albeit a misguided one) that there may be something more sinister behind that state of privacy. He believes he’s so much better than the rest of us; she is plotting something; he clearly has something to hide, etc. Those who value privacy are too often subject to such criticism. Failing to understand why anyone would opt for privacy, would need to breathe and to be, we look down upon them from social perches of superiority.
Some social media has, in many ways, made a mockery of privacy, choosing instead to air everything publicly, freely, frequently:
John Doe is drinking his first latte at the Starbucks on the corner of Lattimer and Green! Jane Doe is starting day #7 of a new diet and exercise regimen destined to transform her in every way! John Doe’s son participated in the 25th annual county basketball tournament! Jane Doe’s daughter just befriended a new student who moved from Texas!
Social media posts are sometimes like those infamous Christmas letters–but on steroids. You know, the ones that make you feel like you and your family are chopped liver? The ones that broadcast a family’s every triumph, every accomplishment, every plan that will make the world a better place. Those letters that get under your skin and cause you to justify your own family’s worth.
And what of these posts in which nothing is private? Are they valuable simply because they are public? Author Gore Vidal writes that Eventually all things are known. And few matter. If so many things are posted so that they may be known, will they ultimately matter?
French author Milan Kundera is less kind:
When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp?
A concentration camp? That’s harsh–perhaps much too harsh. Still, he has a point. When what is private–and is generally best kept private–is broadcast, there may be unforeseen consequences: a loss of significance, intimacy, and sadly even integrity. Too much good stuff may dull our senses. Too much celebration may prompt us to turn a blind eye. When discernment is lacking, social media may be more of an assault than a refuge.
In her article, “The Psychology of Social Media” (Psychology Today, Nov. 14, 2016), Dr. Azedah Alai cites research that reveals that “engaging in upward social comparisons on social media is associated with negative outcomes for users such as lower self-esteem, and the potential for depressive and/or anxiety symptoms” (e.g. Vogel et. al., 2014; Vogel & Rose, 2016). In fact, Vogel’s earlier research (2014) reported that people tend to believe that others who use social media actually have better lives than they do. Our compulsion to scour social media in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses is literally making us sick. A healthy dose of privacy could be just what the doctor ordered.
And those who feel compelled to confess publicly? Often these confessions are desperate cries for acknowledgement, for affirmation, for some sort of connection. Certainly, there may be power and value in connections with others who offer compassion and understanding. Private confessions, however, have the potential for so much more power and value. When you sit knee-to-knee with another human being who is willing and able to listen, it doesn’t get much better than this. In these private and intimate exchanges, we build genuine and lasting relationships that don’t depend on internet availability.
Don’t get me wrong. I use social media regularly and delight in pictures and posts from family, former students, and friends. To an extent, social media has made the world smaller, bringing people and places from far away right into your home. And for this, I am generally grateful. But I am more grateful that I can walk away from my computer and walk into the countryside around me. I am more grateful that I can choose to keep some thoughts, some feelings, and some dreams private. And I am eternally grateful that I can select with whom I will share these. Or not.
The first female Middle Eastern editor-in-chief of an English newspaper, Aysha Taryam claims that And so it is inevitable that the day has come when we write about privacy with such nostalgia, analyzing it as we would some unearthed fossil of a creature our human eyes had never fallen on.
Perhaps the fact that I am writing wistfully about privacy is evidence that we have come to look upon it with nostalgia. I can imagine sitting with my grandchildren and recalling those days when we had no wifi, when we learned to live with our own portion of solitude, when we relished a privacy that had everything to do with simply being and nothing to do with being antisocial. I can imagine explaining how some things are so precious that they need not be shared–or perhaps that they be shared with discernment.
In a few days, my little cabin near the woods will be completed, thanks to my husband’s carpentry skills and willingness to make my dream come to fruition. Even though it is a mere 100 yards from my house, it is far enough and separate enough to provide me with an ample supply of privacy and solitude. This will be my Walden, and like Thoreau, I will go to the woods because I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I will write in this cabin and choose what–if anything–will become public. In truth, I suspect that much of what I think and write will remain–as it should–private.
And if I happen to see a blue bird or an indigo bunting close enough to take in its blueness, I will choose to keep this private, too, reveling in an intimate moment that truly matters.
