by Janice Seto
Spring 2009
“So, Janice, are you hosting another singles potluck on February 14? I remember you always did and I thought that was really nice," said a newly-engaged friend to me on Facebook.
Ahhh, the ghosts of Arctic Valentine’s Days past brought to mind the joy we all used to have in Rankin Inlet. It was an Annual Anti-Couples event. Rather than spend a lonely evening at home on the couch with the cat and a carton of Pilot cookies, we single women each brought to my dining room table a dish to share. On one occasion, we stood up and cheered when Ruthann showed up with a freshly-caught Arctic char, a complement to a tofu entrée and soup from my crockpot.
To keep at bay the reason why we were gathered together on Valentine’s Day, we made sure it was a low-media event. We locked up the DVD and all movies on Feb. 14. It was a lesson learned from the first time we watched Bridget Jones’s Diary en mass. Not ten minutes into the film, everyone was disclosing our failed almost-grooms and bad dates with clueless men. Even documentaries cut too close to home – “Oh, for crying out loud,” groaned a friend who walked out of the courtship scenes of March of the Penguins.
Pouring many cups of tea, we talked frankly about being single Christian women in an isolated town in the Arctic. After all, we are in the capital “C” Conservative Arctic, church-wise. Anglican and Roman Catholic and evangelical. A geographic location where courtship might as well be à la Jane Austen, resigned to waiting for Mr. Darcy… The one where a charter member laughingly mocked reruns of Sex & The City because “wrong on both counts. No sex, no city… Too sad.”
But sometimes, our address might as well be Temptation Tundra.
“We are smart, have good jobs, and are over thirty and the only thing we don’t have are dates. Nothing against you ladies, but these dinners… it’s just NOT the same as being in a couple… And most ministers just don’t get our demographic. They say we have to rejoice in our fate. Ha!”
Not just the established church, but even popular culture and the Great American Songbook form part of the celebration of coupledom. We could karaoke Hooked on a feeling with its opening chant of “Hooga chucka hooga chucka hooga hooga hooga chucka…. (I’m) hooked on a feeling/ I’m high on believing/ that you’re in love with me…”
In our culture, never-been married singleness is a stigma. Lonely people get depressed – Only the Lonely, according to Roy Orbisson - and become obsessed with cats, which is code for giving up on men. Browse the magazine racks, how many periodicals have "Bride" as part of their title? Aside from Maxim-type frat-boy magazines, the number of single magazines are small.
Even the arts world cannot figure out what to do with singles. You do not say "Ginger Rogers." It is "Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire" or "Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nuryev." It seems the same all over. Many a time, I have propped up the wall of the social dances hosted by the Victoria Ballroom Society. Later, I chose to focus on Argentinean tango and sometimes stayed after lessons for the dance milongas. Being rather adept, I did not lack time on the dance floor. However, in lacking a steady partner, it was unlikely my skills would ever improve past intermediate. (One bright spot, if the number of singles reaches a critical mass, I expect disco to return… )
Full-bodied, happenin’, healthy single Christian women d’un certain age might as well have a theme song of Alone Again, “Unless you enter a convent, the church seems to have limited use for singles,” someone said moodily, “They usually tell us to take comfort in St Paul… who must have been one of those rare types with a healthy low libido… He does not speak to those of us closer to the middle of the spectrum.”
Maybe The Da Vinci Code was right: that female sexuality has been unfairly condemned by a patriarchy to control women, averred a newcomer, “to make me feel guilty for listening to the hits of Dr Hook?”
Nearly dropping her Kit Kat, one of our charter members replied, “Regardless of what Dan Brown has written, I have never had any problems with controlling my libido.”
“It’s easy for you to say, you had been married for 12 years, and are now on the market with a full tank of gas,” came a retort that left us speechless.
These are the types of frank and honest and open conversations you can have only in camera with no priest or single man to shock.
I brought up a book on order from Chapters.ca by evangelist Ty Adams, “Single, Saved and Having Sex." Some responded with “Janice, two questions: first, what kind of church is she with, and when’s it coming up here?”
From the kitchen came a snicker, “Seriously, the title is misleading. I had gotten a copy from InterLibrary Loan. The author says sex outside of marriage in any form is totally wrong.”
“Oh, the TRAITOR! Another woman is revealed as a handmaiden to the patriarchy…”
As the conversation turns, it expands. It is a given that society tells us a fulfilling life depends on pairing up as if Noah were back tomorrow with big boat plans. However the impact of this message on everyone begs the question of our craving for coupledom. “Is it because we are truly Addicted to Love (Robert Palmer) or is it really that Nobody Wants to Be Lonely (Ricky Martin & Christina Aguillera)?”
As single Christian women with an extremely limited set of options – none of which involve going to the Legion and doing the karaoke version of Donna Summers’ Hot Stuff - do we unconsciously look for - even settle - for a partner in order to change our status from single and therefore legitimize a healthy expression of our selves?
Maybe the reason singleness seems discomfiting is that often you find yourself alone with a stranger, "The Stranger in the Mirror." For a large percentage of the population, the pressure of a dissatisfying job, an unfulfilling family life or a neglected physical self has resulted in a disconnect with who you really are. Has this focus on the exterior resulted in your essentially not keeping your eye on the puck, and ignoring for years the voice of your authentic self to the point that you have actually sublimated or even forgotten who you are really all about?
One episode from one of the newer Star Trek TV series resonates with me, “You are not supposed to be here. You are out of place in this time.” It’s a science fiction telling of an ancient wisdom, that you may be living someone else’s version of your life. Perhaps that is why being lonely - to be alone with yourself - is uncomfortable and off-putting. No wonder most retreat from opportunities of renewing with yourself, the now stranger, and holding yourself accountable to that conversation “How did you let this happen to you?”
What ends up exacerbating the disconnect from the authentic self is making choices from the perspective of the false you. The ‘you’ who is present to the world is just a shade of your authentic self, as in Dante’s Divine Comedy. As the lyrics of superstar by Karen Carpenter go: “You’re not really here. It’s just the radio.”
That leads me to suggest that there are only two reasons why we singles seek company either to take your best self and form a community with others, or to keep your distance from your authentic self and to keep so busy with another that you refrain from asking that question.
If you devote your resources to seeking a relationship that was built around a shade of you, to continually defer the work, you need to do to know your true self, that only worsens the problem. Maybe your purpose in life is to nurture in one homestead, then it would make sense to look for a partner to share that goal. If, on the other hand, you have actually suppressed the authentic self of an adventurer, and offered to the world the shade of a homesteader, then the incongruity between who you choose as a partner (another homesteader) and who you really are has been perpetuated and further supports the disconnect.
It appears to me than many of us avoid loneliness by convincing ourselves that a life with the wrong one is better than with no one. How sad that both partners then struggle with a relationship built on the membership of least one false self, a truly shady character. In Sex & The City The Movie, the character of Samantha (played by Nanaimo’s Kim Cattrall) chooses to be alone with herself rather than remain in a five-year relationship that “isn’t working.” How often does that happen in real life? All of us can name someone who is in a boomerang make-up, break-up relationship or marriage in which happiness and joy are scant.
Having outlined the worst-case scenario (or after scaring myself straight), how do we get to the inevitable task, to get comfortable with The Stranger Within?
It never hurts your cause to explore what others do. Throughout my time at St John the Divine, I preferred the 8 AM service. Just a dozen of us with no music or familiar people to distract me.
As you go deeper, however, you may choose to separate yourself from the comfortable daily routine and go on a retreat setting with others who are also trying to discern and distill themselves via focused, unbiased self-reflection. I remember fondly the enneagram weekly sessions I attended at Queenswood hosted by Sister Patricia Shreenan, during my studies and first jobs in Victoria.
She would lead off with a meditation, which I found very hard to get into. My first reaction was "Let’s get to the point." In fact, I initially timed my arrivals – with the assistance of BC Transit – to show up just as meditation was coming to an end. That is how unfamiliar with myself I was…
Sister Patricia just kindly and generously encouraged me to be patient with myself, and for that, I am forever thankful. She asked the difficult questions and probed through my simplistic answers. Like a large ice cube, I believe I melted from both the outside in and the inside out, in a process that at times advanced quickly in a form of punctuated equilibrium and at others, stalled like a car.
All too soon, unexpectedly, came the very clear sign that there was no avoiding it any more: I had to travel the rest of the journey ALONE. There is nothing quite as intimidating as the realization that you must move forward with only yourself as company. You cannot see that far ahead; you know only that from now on, you have to rely on no one else, no more mentors. That sinecure no longer can be of assistance. The rest is up to you to get beyond the shade.
Just you and your beliefs and the now less intimidating stranger – but how? For Christians, our role model is the Lord, who showed us His own struggle during the 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. And His successive temptations. The most important fact I keep in mind is that at the end, the cost was such that even He needed ministering by the angels.
Similarly, I sought out psychological independence and physical isolation so as to learn more and get comfortable with my authentic self, and there is a cost to the emergent me. That means more than just going cold turkey for a week on that great Canadian invention, The Blackberry. Not everyone who has accompanied you at stages in the encounter with the shade will be there afterwards. Very good people came into the life of your Inauthentic Self and fall away as the authentic self blossoms. Friends see things differently, and never see each other again. Except in the company of others where civility guides the conversation. We no longer talk like we used to. Jung and Freud parted ways as it is never the same when the chick flies the nest. Expect to hear some version of “I don’t know you any more. Did I ever know you?” and feel the regret and pain for the suffering caused by you, however unintentional.
It is during the awkward attempts to stand in my own authentic self, in the face of approbation of many people I respect, that I truly feel the comfort of Psalm 23. It’s too easy to forget the ultimate companion.
So we read together: “Yea, though I walk through Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me…”. (One very profound reading is found on youtube, under “Psaume 23 dit par un berger”, recited by Michel, an older shepherd somewhere in Europe. As you view this, you can feel, “He lives this…”) We sing in church: “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”.
I picked up, in the Great American Songbook, the song Fly me to the Moon, sung with initial tentativeness in a still small voice à la Astrud Gilberto, and then as faith grows, via the Frank Sinatra version, the exact sentiments of total confidence in God’s grace: “Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars… In other words, hold my hand… Fill my heart with song and let me sing forevermore. You are all I long for, all I worship and adore. In other words, please be true, in other words, I love you…”
Only by the Lord appealing to us to resolutely face our stranger self – in company, in retreat, and finally, in isolation – can we come out with a stronger and more accurate understanding of the authentic self. In so doing, I also have come across others who can say “in the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood…” and eventually emerged feeling that, as per Barry Manilow, “I made it through the rain… and found myself accepted by the others who got rained onto and made it through…”
Upon uncovering your authentic self, you then are more open to the signs of happy and enlightened singleness everywhere. Even popular culture now has songs of singledom - YMCA (Village People) and Single Ladies (Beyonce) – which express who you are and where you are now.
Even Only the Lonely may be rehabilitated; as an impetus to convert the stranger within to the reacquainted authentic self. Nowadays, I find Only the Lonely refers to those who have chosen to seek out their hidden true self and therefore have forgotten within themselves the unwavering presence of the Divine – ironically, they discover that lonely, they never are. And never were.
Glory to God, whose Power working within us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Dedicated to Joanne Leyland, a true friend
Copyright 2009 by Janice Seto