Without a Penny to Spend, They Dress to the Letter

Part IV (My Response to Luke)

On this issue, I come down on the side of balance. I would call it Aristotelian, but then I would just sound like a blow-hard. It seems that from my observations, both of myself and others, that we all need to have time of personal reflection and solitude in order to discover ourselves and really understand what is going on in our heads/hearts, but if we don't spend some of our lives interacting and being challenged by others, we'll always fall a little bit short of where we might have been if we had been exposed to challenging ideas/circumstances from others.

With that said, it seems that we have an interesting situation in the modern, wired world. People probably spend more time in isolation physically than ever before with things like TV, iPods, the internet, etc. At the same time, though, we have all of those things fighting for our attention, so do we ever really spend time, as you frame it, stuck alone on an island in self-reflection? I don't think we do.

I know that I have to try to balance the time I spend in isolation versus community because I know that without a balance between the two, I'll either become a hermit or I'll become co-dependent on others, always needing their input and validation for everything I do.

Your thoughts?

JTS