KEY POINTS:
The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh understood loneliness. In Inniskeen Road: July Evening he invokes an archetypal castaway to convey his frustration at the isolation a poet sometimes feels from his fellow man.
Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight/ Of being king and government and nation./A road, a mile of kingdom, I am King/Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.
Kavanagh asks the question; what good is a paltry kingdom of earth and stones if he is the only one in it, if he cannot share it with anyone else?
The theme of connectedness, of a shared humanity, runs through the canon of Western poetry from Milton to Ginsburg, finding probably its best-known expression in the words of the English metaphysical poet John Donne. No man is an island,/Entire of itself. Each is a piece of continent,/A part of the main ... Therefore send not to know/ For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
We do not exist in isolation as human beings. What affects one of us affects us all. Events of global significance; a tsunami, a September 11, New Zealand being knocked out of the Rugby World Cup in the semis, all conspire to remind us that our existence on this Earth is a shared one, however much the misanthropes among us would wish it otherwise.
There are clear upsides to this - the benefit of the support and comfort of one's fellows in times of need and hardship; the reassurance of a conversation that reminds you you're not mad, that it happens to us all; not having to eat dinner alone too often. All good things. And yet it's a delicate business, this communion with one another.
Too little and one ends up bitter and isolated like Paddy Kavanagh, too much and people might get sick of you and you run the risk of having nothing left for yourself.
I am reminded of this every time I have logged on to Facebook lately. Like many of my generation I am networked. Firmly and irrevocably connected to my peers and associates via my mobile, my computer and my social networking site of choice. And lately, especially where the social networking is concerned, I'm wondering if this is such a good thing.
I joined Facebook about six months ago. It is a very fun way to interact with friends. It's handy for an expat like me as it makes keeping in touch so easy. Some of my friends live thousands of miles away, and yet just one log-in later and there they all are, shivering in the cold of a Northern winter, sipping mai tais in Thailand, blowing me virtual kisses and dedicating songs to me that we used to dance to back in the day. It's lovely. At first. And yet as the months have gone on, my relationship with the Book of The Face has begun to curdle.
In the way of these things, it is what first seemed so right about Facebook that now seems so wrong. The ease of communication has now become a curse. For, now that it's so easy to talk, to laugh, to keep faraway friends clear and present in my life, why do I not do it? Why don't I make more of an effort? My stagnant Superwall and mounting pile of unanswered friends' requests sit there reproaching me every time I log in, increasing my feelings of impotence and guilt.
Surely this isn't what Donne had in mind when he wrote about being "A part of the main"?
It is nice to exist in common. But, like many of my generation, I live a peripatetic existence, largely free of the traditional ballast of family, partner or children of my own. That doesn't mean I don't need ties that bind. I realised this last weekend when I lost my mobile phone.
The loss of a mobile is an occupational hazard for every drinker. Taking a little device the thickness of a box of matches along on a night's carousing is just asking for trouble. A friend is so afraid of losing his mobile that he takes the precaution of backing up his numbers and bringing an older model along on evenings which promise to get seriously lairy.
Alas, I was not so well prepared last Sunday, with the result that I now find myself with a new handset and an empty contacts book. The panic that washed over me on waking to discover I was sans cellphone will be hard for many of you to understand. How pathetic, you'll sneer, to be so attached to a silly, intrusive piece of technology. Those of you who switch off your Nokias at 6.30 every night in order to reclaim some "me" time and avoid the radiation had better stop reading right now.
My phone is a lifeline. It is the bridge that connects me with the metaphysical main. I text, therefore I am. Connectivity is an essential for many of us, but to truly enjoy it one has to be able to dictate the terms. It's about choosing when, where and who to talk to every day. Otherwise talk is cheap and tiring.
Donne may be right. No man is an island, but it is nice to be able to pull up the drawbridge every now and then.
