We are all public in a way we never were before. We also have an unparalleled amount of privacy.
Eventually, my mom would pick up the phone in her room and her voice would come over the line: ‘This is O.W.’s mom, and it’s time for O.W. to go to bed now.’
Every day we send our thoughts, pictures, and videos out into cyberspace to be viewed by countless strangers — people we’ve never met and will never meet.
And yet we could go days without ever talking to another soul — even while living in the heart of a bustling city. We could order food online and have it delivered it to our door. Order all our stuff on Amazon and it comes a few days later. Work from home. Never leave.
Hiding in public
We are plugged into some sort of technological exhibition in a way that approaches science fiction, and at the same time we all possess the ability to become hermits at any given moment.
It’s a striking juxtaposition unique to our technologically advanced, materially abundant era.
We long for privacy. No one wants to be crowded. It’s part of some inner human need to seek open space, to long for the great horizon, the open sky, the place where we can stretch our arms wide. To be alone.
Yet it’s a conundrum. We seek this with all our might, but at the end there is something profoundly alienating that comes over us when we no longer need anyone else. When we have all the privacy in the world, all we want is someone there.
Room to spare
Look at family life. Part of it is being forced together, even when you don’t want to be together. It’s less privacy, more face to face. It’s being around one another whether you like it or not.
But there are more children with their own rooms today than ever before. That might sound like a fine thing on the surface. Who doesn’t want more space?
But is it good? Why does a kid need his own room? Why does he need to be alone so much? He doesn’t.
Some claim that paralyzing introversion as we know it today might be related to the large number of children who grow up with their own rooms. When kids grow up with all this privacy and all this alone time, they retreat. They don’t have to get in the mix of family life.
Everything is quieter and softer. That becomes their standard. When we aren’t forced together, we end up alone, and then being together ends up jarring to us. Paralyzing introversion by way of excessive privacy.
Cutting the cord
We had a landline when I was in high school. I would stay up and talk to my girlfriend late at night. I would drag that long, curly phone cord from the kitchen back into the study.
Eventually, my mom would pick up the phone in her room and her voice would come over the line: “This is O.W.’s mom, and it’s time for O.W. to go to bed now.”
It was, to put it simply, embarrassing. I knew it was coming every time, but it never got easier. I would have loved nothing more than to have my own cell phone so that I could talk to my girlfriend in complete privacy without worrying about everyone hearing or my mom chiming in on the other line.
Family plan
But just because we want it, is it good to have it? No, of course not. We understand this about lots of obvious things. But this one — privacy — is not so obvious. It sounds strange, but having my mom pick up the phone while I was talking to my girlfriend feels like family.
Calling your high school girlfriend’s house, having her dad pick up, and then having to ask him if you could talk to her — this also somehow feels like family. Not your family, but her family. The fact that she is a part of something else, that her family is there in the other room, that they know who you are, that you have to go through them to talk to her, that she doesn’t have all the privacy she wants. Something about this is right. It’s how we are supposed to grow up.
We might wish so much for simple peace and quiet, a space that is all our own. The pursuit of privacy might be what inspires us to build, grow, and conquer. We all work so hard so that we all have as much space as we want. We finally all have our own room, our own phone, our own car, and our own lives. My, is it lonely.
O.w. root, Men’s style, Family, Privacy, Lifestyle
