A Stranger to Yourself

If you want to know who you are there are two ways of going about it. One is "to go into your cell and your cell will teach you everything"; and the other is to go travelling.

In the first the invitation is to be alone, quiet, without distractions and without "the scaffolding of avoidance." This is all the stuff we all do every day to keep ourselves protected from more than we feel we can manage. So we avoid silence (by using radio, telly, CDs, podcasts etc), we read escapist material, we socialise etc. What we don’t do is spend very much time on our own without something to distract us from ourselves.

Whereas some might think that going into your cell and spending time apart takes you out of the world, travelling seems to do the opposite, to take you into the world. Surely travel "broadens the mind" whilst being on your own narrows it.

We travel to other other countries and faraway places to engage with what is different, with what is to strange. That is unless we are like the caricatured Englishman abroad who goes to Spain and looks for the nearest "English" pub and fish and chip shop, all aimed at the anxious UK tourist. But before we sneer at them perhaps we should see how comfortable our last holiday abroad was. In the midst of a foreign country how foreign was our hotel / cottage? How different was our standard of living? How much of the real local culture did we see or engage with?

Going into your cell or travelling have something in common. They take us out of our comfort zone. We go to strange places and meet someone we didn't expect to meet, the stranger that we are to ourselves. We build our "scaffolding of avoidance" absolutely in order to avoid the uncomfortable things of our lives and by doing that we don't meet ourselves. We build our "scaffolding of avoidance" when we travel but do not engage with the reality of the place we go to. Engaging with the reality wakes us up to our own expectations and deficiencies. How do I feel / cope when clean water is not readily available, the buses don’t run on time or my luggage gets lost? How do I feel about eating strange food or not knowing how to behave in a social setting culturally different to my own? Who is this person when her environment is not controlled?

How do I feel in my cell (room) when I only have only my own company / memories / fears / hopes to accompany me for an extended period. How is it that my head is as full of noise and conversation as it when I am "in" the world. How do I soothe myself? How do I control my environment? Where do I find peace?

If you want to know yourself travelling or your "cell" both work wonders. But you have to go out of your comfort zone. Then, surprisingly, you may find that the strangest stranger is yourself.

How do I do? It’s nice to meet me.

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