I cannot be alone. I can't eat alone, walk alone, pee alone, work alone, work out alone — hell, I can't even sleep alone, which is why I brought the embarrassingly named Bunny-Bun to school.
In a shocking display of selfishness, my friends have chosen to sustain lives outside of my need to be accompanied, so I've had to turn to others. Thom Yorke walks me to class. Lupe goes on the elliptical with me (and I'm ashamed to say, sometimes the Hanson brothers do, too). David Byrne chills with me while I clean my room, and Kate Nash and Mason Jennings are always down to hang out when I am cooking. I am seriously dependent on over a thousand famous people who have no idea I exist.
Let's face it, this affliction of mine is yours, too. Our generation's ability to fly solo is seriously stunted, and for that I blame Steve Jobs. His ironically titled line of "i"-things do anything but promote the "I" in my life, but rather, over time, have amplified and distorted one of the most universal human fears: the fear of being alone.
Sit on the quad, and you will see that of those students walking alone, the vast majority are sporting those tell-tale white ear buds, or, if they're like me, they are calling their mom/dad/sister/best friend/aunt/other sister with absolutely no intention beyond passing the time it takes to walk from Olin to Anderson.
Even with the advent of cell phones, nothing enables us to avoid our own company quite like the iPod. The iPod lets us harbor two months worth of recorded sound in an object the size of a deck of cards, meaning that at any given moment, you have at your fingertips the perfect song for any occasion. You can make a playlist for any potentially solitary activity — on my iPod I have playlists entitled Walk, Run, Cook, Clean and Study, and I have a feeling you do, too. On the off-chance that you don't have a ready-made distraction from your long, lonely walk to the Davis T stop, iPods are equipped with the On-the-Go playlist feature, further enforcing our belief that a journey alone should be endured, not enjoyed.
Thich Nhat Hanh, a famed Buddhist monk, might as well have been looking into the soul of every iPod-carrying, too-busy-to-introspect, overworked-and-under-graded college student when he said that, "We feel that there is a vacuum in us and we don't want to confront it ... every time we have a spare moment, we are afraid of being alone with ourselves." He cited television, driving and novels (oh, those were the days) as the distractions, but in a world that is wireless, portable and increasingly small in size, an iPod is even better — or worse. Thich Nhat Hahn also warned that when we use a machine, we change, becoming both ourselves, and, in this case, the iPod. That, to me, is a scary thought.
A few days ago, my iPod's battery died, and because most of my nonessential belongings are still in boxes (including my iPod cable), I currently have no way to charge it. I could just unpack the rest of my stuff, but I am having trouble finding the motivation, probably because no one will do it with me. I have, however, walked many places without the aid of my Summer '08 playlist, or even that old standby, Walk. I resist the urge to bother my mom from 11:20 to 11:23 by calling for absolutely no reason. I am easing into being alone with myself, and it is actually kind of liberating. Who knows how long I will wait to charge my iPod? Given my track record, it could be weeks. Just don't ask me to go to Dewick by myself.
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Jessie Borkan is a junior majoring in clinical psychology. She can be reached at Jessie.Borkan@tufts.edu.
