Thank You for Isolation

Watercolor: Lea Kelley by Jack L.

I’m wondering about our general view of the word Isolation.

Maybe because isolation is associated with loneliness, or quarantines, or separation from the familiar, we are averse to going there.

Maybe isolation looks like tuberculosis or severe depression or seniors who don’t have a car.

When I think of isolation, I see a shiny silver object standing out from a multitude of brass objects.

The word isolation sounds like silence on the prairie, a frozen glass house in a pristine field touched by one ray of sunlight.

Isolation looks like a row boat in the center of a calm lake.

But on the banks of that calm lake is a strong force that keeps pulling the row boat back to shore.

Though I love a solo boat ride on a lake under a full moon, I also like coming back to tell someone how beautiful it was.

We are not meant to be alone for too long, I think.

“Social isolation in both animals and humans can be responsible for a range of psychological effects, including anxiety, aggression and memory impairment,” said Dr. Erminio Costa, director of the UIC Psychiatric Institute.

Extreme isolation or forced isolation can hurt us by making us forget who we are.

But sometimes, if we get the opportunity, we can experience the kind of isolation that heals the overtaxed human and helps us remember who we are.

Everyone knows you have to isolate a problem to fix it.

Isolationism in world affairs means refusing to participate in someone else’s war.

Now, if everyone refused at the same time, that might be good, making war an isolated incident.

PS

The advice of Switzerland’s popular saint, Nicholas of Flüe (1417-87), “Don’t get involved in other people’s affairs” has been the hallmark of Swiss policy for nearly 500 years. The country has in effect been neutral since 1515, a status formally recognised and guaranteed by the great powers of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.

So isolationism must not be so bad, eh?

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~ by leakelley on May 3, 2016.