A Withdrawal from Withdrawing

The meaning of withdrawal has multiple meanings which include the act of disconnecting from society and embracing one's own privacy, it also can mean the act of taking out money from an account and a third meaning it can mean the symptoms experienced from drug or alcohol addiction.  The meaning here is the act of social disconnection.

I have paradoxical qualities of an introvert and an extrovert and this is a blessing because I can enjoy both sides of living this personality range.  "Range" is a very important concept for me because I like the idea of living on the full spectrum of life, rather than find myself partisan to one or another side of existence.  It really comes down to what the emergent nature of our existence is and what I like about that kind of emergence is that this is something we can control without controlling the experience.  Ultimately being controlled and trying to control are not aspects of personal flow but aspects of personal imprisonment.

In a socially prejudiced society where the chief prejudice is that we should be tribal, the movement to the indivisible is eschewed by society in favour of the group, the individual is the indivisible.  The pathway to connection is in our powers to disconnect, the pathway to certainty is embracing uncertainty and the pathway to control is to realize when we are being a control freak.   The paradox of these these 3 "C's is now not lost on me :

CONNECTION

CERTAINTY

CONTROL

I do subscribe to the idea that we should not make other human beings our project and that is the greatest representation of the inner control freak in most of us - other than the rare souls who are free of this conditioned response.  So it is that what we reflect on is not a panacea or a prescription for others in how they should live their lives, or how they seek identification through similarity and thus certainty.   The greatest connection is the indivisible because when we understand or comprehend the power in that, we may begin to see our connection to the whole.  Yet this connection plugs us into group-think rather than individual life force.  We may speak of freedom but we have no clue as to what freedom is.

The irony of freedom is that most forms of freedom are damaging to us and thus the social guards and formulas created to safeguard us from freedom as anarchy.   Yet there is a freedom that is freeing and that freedom does not exist in the political, technical, economic or social externality but only within us.  Thus the act of withdrawing from society is freeing until we reach a threshold where we have exceeded our individuality and we become divided from both nature and being. 

The story of Howard Hughes fits that moment when withdrawing becomes unhealthy and here we all know our own personal story about the famous recluse.   The man who wrote Catcher in the Rye did withdraw from society but in the case of J.D. Salinger, the book that made him a cult hero became the fame that Salinger did not want.  Not only did Salinger withdraw but members of his local village guarded his privacy, so much so that when fans tried to invade his privacy the local villagers sent these fans on a wild goose chase, directing them away from Salinger.  That use of a red herring by community members who understood Salinger is an example of healthy withdrawal.

While my act of withdrawal replaces the social and digital invasion of my privacy, there is a point where I know that I too am withdrawing too much - that it is beginning to border on the other bookend of unhealthy existence.  For sure there is healthy social existence but human beings are not 100% attention machines.  Even the greatest amount of anxiety is impossible to be always-on.  Even anxiety needs breathing room in order to exist! Thus anxiety comes and goes, though at the time of greatest intensity it may feel like it is a permanent part of someone's life.  It is not noticed by the anxious person that if they tried to sustain anxiety by wanting to remain anxious all the time, they cannot because even anxiety withdraws, though it may quickly return for those who are extremely sensitive to this signal.

The point is that withdrawal is a choice that can help and is made debilitating more by a tribal grouping that sees withdrawing into withdrawal as a social negative.  This is why people who are so imprisoned with this negative implication insist that we are all personal brands.  What we are is that we are all tribal and that tribalism lays down this conditioning.  

At present I recognize that I have reached a point of personal freedom where the act of how I have withdrawn from social processes has reached a point where it is touching the other bookend of unhealthy practice.  At the other bookend social conditioning is also an unhealthy practice but because we are all so socially and trivially conditioned we live in this straitjacket of perceived wisdom.    Too much of a good thing is not a good thing. 

So it is that I am now actively thinking about where the paradoxical sweet-spot is between connection, control and certainty.  The irony of the present moment is that when I hear people talk about connection I am actually hearing voices that feel disconnection.  When I hear people talk about happiness I am actually hearing voices that feel unhappiness. When I hear voices that talk about branding I am actually hearing voices that feel branded.  All this talk is a constraint to freedom because in that talk connection, control and certainty become our bondage and not our freedom.

If I am have established a bank account of personal freedom, privacy is the withdrawal system but when we withdraw too much privacy we become overdrawn and then at this point, where I recognize my existence to be at this present minute, the idea of withdrawing from the withdrawal becomes a reflective wisdom of my being and not a call to action for others.