Trade-offs and Triumphs 13
Issue 13: Time, Isolation versus Solitude versus Loneliness, Rubber Balls and Glass Balls
Hello, friends! Thank you for subscribing, and welcome to my new subscribers!
Welcome to issue 13!
Thank you for your time, and how was your week? What were your trade-offs and triumphs?
There are approximately 66 days left to the rest of 2020 - as we count down:
What is your plan for the rest of the 2020?
Name all the positive things that have happened for you during 2020.
And can any of us capture TIME?
Throughout the next few weeks of newsletters, I will respond to these questions.
Photo by Jordan Benton from Pexels
Isolation versus Solitude versus Loneliness
Isolation contracts. Solitude expands.
Last week, I cited Vijay Gupta’s (founder and artistic director of Street Symphony) sharp distinction between isolation and solitude: “Isolation diminishes us, whereas solitude opens us, awakens us to our internal lives.”
But when does isolation lead to loneliness?
Hannah Arendt provided us some insight into how isolation may lead to loneliness. Samantha Rose Hill explains how Hannah Arendt believed that isolation and loneliness differed:
Isolation and loneliness are not the same. I can be isolated – that is in a situation in which I cannot act, because there is nobody who will act with me – without being lonely; and I can be lonely – that is in a situation in which I as a person feel myself deserted by all human companionship – without being isolated.
Like all emotional states, taken to extremes, loneliness can exhibit itself in destructive patterns.
So in creating and sustaining our communities, how do we work toward identifying those who are lonely even in a sea of people (or Zoom faces)?
And how do we learn to recognize within ourselves loneliness apart from solitude or isolation?
If you have any thoughts, please contact me at jennykimwop@gmail.com.
Rubber Balls and Glass Balls
Instead of judging each other's fragility, how do we cultivate the rubber ball in each other?
The reality is that we all have both rubber and glass ball tendencies. We have to work together to cultivate "hearts of rubber balls”:
✅ Realize our triggers
✅ By not judging - instead, try to peel back layers and seek discovery
✅ By learning and supporting
✅ By supporting
Big thanks to Dan Greenwald, Abhishek Verma and Kaylei Ruffing for your conversations and feedback on this most recent essay that I published.
And Kaylei had her own “spiked glass ball moment” - it was her moment of control by “letting go what is hurting us.”
Watercolors by Richard Thorn via Aesthetic Sharer ZHR
Take a moment to stare at these watercolors, and the water’s crystalline shimmers.
Anything is possible.
Have any questions or comments? You can find me on Twitter @jennykim or email me at jennykimwop@gmail.com
Check out my website for more: puttingittogether.blog
See you next week!
No lie as a trade-off is ever worth the temporary illusion of triumph. Keep on cultivating that rubber ball heart.
And, find that trade-off that will lead to triumph this week, no matter how small, and celebrate it.