Why We Are Alienated From Ourselves

Our intellectual world is made up of categories, it is bordered by arbitrary and artificial frontiers.

We need to build bridges, but for that there is a need for knowledge, a greater vision of man and his destiny.

Yehudi Menuhin

U.S. and British violinist and conductor

Preamble

I have no words to describe my loneliness, my sadness, or my anger.

I have no words to speak my need for exchange, understanding, recognition.

So I criticize, I insult, or I strike.

Or I have my fix, abuse alcohol, or get depressed.

Violence, expressed within or without, results from a lack of vocabulary; it is the expression of a frustration that has no words to express it.

And there are good reasons for that; most of us have not acquired a vocabulary for our inner life. We never learned to describe accurately what we were feeling and what needs we had. Since childhood, however, we have learned a host of words. We can talk about history, geography, mathematics, science, or literature; we can describe computer technology or sporting technique and hold forth on the economy or the law. But the words for life within ... when did we learn them? As we grew up, we became alienated from our feelings and needs in an attempt to listen to those of our mother and father, brothers and sisters, schoolteachers, et al.: "Do as Mommy tells you ... Do whatever your cousin who's coming to play with you this afternoon wants ... Do what is expected of you."

And it was thus that we started to listen to the feelings and needs of everyone — boss, customer, neighbor, colleagues — except ourselves! To survive and fit in, we thought we had to be cut off from ourselves.

Then one day the payment comes due for such alienation! Shyness, depression, misgivings, hesitations in reaching decisions, inability to choose, difficulties to commit, a loss of taste for life. Help! We circle 'round and 'round like the water draining from a sink. We are about to go under. We are waiting for someone to drag us out, to be given instructions, and yet, at the same time, recommendations aren't exactly welcome! We're snowed under with "You must do this ... It's high time you did that ... You should ..."

What we need most of all is to get in touch with ourselves, to seek a solid grounding in ourselves, to feel within that it is we who are speaking, we who decide and not our habits, our conditioning, our fears of a