The Opposite of Separation

With grateful thanks to the source of this wonderful photo for sharing it on creative commons licence

Single-celled organisms like this paramecium, if you look at them down a microscope they look just like the diagrams. The whole structure is laid out transparently for you to see. This is amazing to me because I usually think of diagrams as simplifications of what's actually there. But in the case of these very lively little creatures, what's there is marvellously simple.

And if they're alive when you're looking at them, you are struck by how very fast their  movements are. All those cilia, orchestrated in an elegant Mexican wave every few milliseconds. 

Cilia are made of an arrangement of tiny tubules linked together by dynein protein molecules. Whenever one of these protein molecules is able to gain energy from ATP molecules floating around in the cell, it changes shape, bends on itself and crawls up one of the microtubules. This bends the whole cilium. Because of their tiny size, the movements of the microtubules are at the rate of the biolochemical processes that drive them. Which is driven by the availability of ATP molecules, and very fast indeed.

These superfast chemical reactions are happening all the time in our behemoths of bodies. The natural speed of life processes is many hundreds of times as fast as we could ever move as a multicellular whole. And at a fundamental level each cell of our bodies only exists because of these superfast chemical processes. 

Each single cell is only able to exist as a stable entity because of the action of pumps embedded in and forming part of the cell wall. Without the pumps preventing it becoming flooded with water from outside, a cell inevitably draws in fluid until it becomes identical to the substrate outside. Like a boat with holes in it, without the pumps in the cell walls it would not be possible to stay alive. No single-cell life, no multicellular life, no plants, fungi or animals, no human beings. Staying separate from the culture, the substrate it lives in, is an active process at the chemical level. Life needs to be constantly bailing water in order to continue to be.

Separation

All my life I have been trying to separate myself more. I believe that self-knowledge and wisdom are to be found in the peaceful, alone spaces of life. There's a lot of writing out there that suggests this may be true, at least for some.  

The quieter you become, the more you can hear. Ram Dass

All writers on the spiritual life uniformly recommend, nay, command under penalty of total failure, the practice of silence – The Catholic Encyclopedia

And I am just the kind of person who prefers to be quiet and listen, like a radio tuned to receive the inner experience of being human rather than the outer. If I had the choice I would would rather not have to engage with the thoughts and ideas and expectations of others because they interfere with the quality of reception I'm able to get from the inside. I do a lot of bailing to make it so I don't do it any more than I have to. 

To me the alternative to separating myself out has always seemed to be to dive into the prevailing culture and be swallowed by it. To go along with the life my mother seemed to want for me, which was stuck in 1950s rules about what to value and how to behave, or switch to the cultural expectations of my peers and colleagues, which was too confusing for me. I could wear tweed and pearls and mix only with the children of my parents' friends, or wear only the seasonal fashions of one high street style and be hobbled by heels either way. Hobbled by trying to pass as something I am not.

I know this will all sound very selfish. It is selfish, as there are always people and tasks that I care about and need attention. The dilemma has been a particularly unresolveable issue for me as a doctor, a wife and mother, a middle sister. If you agree with the American poet and memoirist Mary Carr, that

The self evolves to reconcile its inner conflicts over time.

then this has been a major one for me. Am I the altruistic over-revved professional giving my life away to the damaged people of London? Or am I the naval-gazing, self-obsessed neglector of my duties as a wife and mother? Was I more like my praise-seeking mother, or my truth-seeking father? It seemed to me for many years that I had to be one or the other - culpable either way of the self-denial of one or the other-neglect of the other. And I lived in the dilemma that until I knew which, I wouldn't know how to live. 

Ultimate separation

When I retired and I finally had the opportunity to choose freely, you will not be surprised that I found I was naturally on the side of self-absorbed. I am lucky enough to have money for a relatively modest life, and living in London a great deal of opportunity to do almost anything I could wish. And I found it wasn't the panacea I had been hoping for. 

Once I had overcome the guilt about not using my skills and experience to help the suffering, I found, not a garden of delights in my solitude, but a quicksand of emptiness. If I pursue my idiosyncratic interests too far down the rabbithole, I quickly come to a place that is intellectually interesting but ultimately trivial. There is a sterility to it in the end, with none of the anticipated reward of wisdom from it. 

In fact, any real wisdom I have distilled in my life has been triggered by allowing the experience of life outside my room to percolate within it. It has come from being thrown into the chaos of mental health services, and from serious illness, it was the intake of nourishment from outside that fed the illumination inside.

And now it's clear that the whole idea of either, or - either the peace of being alone or the belonging and energy of being out there - is a misunderstanding of what life is. My life is not, after all, about chosing between separation or undifferentiation. The paramecium is not desperately bailing out to avoid taking on water and dissolving. It needs the bailing for integrity, but it needs the water for nourishment. I have been blind to the dynamic equilibrium that it needs for life. 

I have been blind to the dynamic equilibrium I need to function most effectively and rewardingly: the silence I need for integrity as I engage with the world, the interaction and experience I need for nourishment and inspiration.

Pulling in the antennae  

Since my eye operation a few days ago I've been aware of a narrowing of my focus. I have been hunkering down and deprioritizing the news, the neighbours, the house I live in, the administrative tasks of life, even my immediate family. For a few days now my world has been my body and the chair in the little room where I do my writing and sewing. 

It's an instinctual thing, I suppose, to retreat into myself while I recover. Reduce the demands on myself and let my body do its thing. And as I do, I feel rising in myself the stuckness, the deadness of this separated kind of life. 

The opposite of separation 

So it's been a long journey for me to discover that the opposite of separation is not undifferentiated merging with the culture, but something much more interesting and achievable: the taking of my place in the crowd as one of those who is tuned to the inner experience. 

For some this has been obvious from early life. Perhaps they are more conflicted about other things. Perhaps for them it is the other way around - how to excavate time for themselves in a compassionate life. For some the realisation has been quicker and less painful. 

But all around me I see people conflicted on this self-tribe axis and acting it out in the world in ways that are damaging to themselves as well as others. Perhaps my allowing myself to soak in more of the cultural substrate of my inner paramecium can help me to help them with that.