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Column Talking to myself: a way out of gray world inside my
head
By JEANNETTE BATZ
Head bent, Lucy was moving as fast
as her arthritic legs would carry her. Oscar Meyer, a scruffy little dog as
black as Lucys dyed hair, shushed along at her ankles like a mop. They
were both concentrating so hard, they didnt notice us until we were
almost upon them. When Lucy looked up and saw a familiar dog walker, she
grinned in relief. Hes tryin to argue religion with me,
she said, gesturing toward the man back at the bus stop, and I told him I
just dont do that. She scurried on, eager to get even farther away,
and we resumed our walk, heading straight for the bus stop.
It says in the Bible, he started in as soon as we
reached shouting distance, that if youre talking to yourself,
youre talking to Satan! Did you know that?
Er
Im not big on Satan, I blurted,
tugging Sophies lead forward. He called after us several times, and I
could still hear him when I reached the corner, talking now only to himself,
and presumably the devil.
I shrugged and smiled one of those urban seen-it-all smiles,
gathering up the superiority Id need to dismiss the experience. The
bus-stop prophet was no doubt mentally ill, his brain short on serotonin and
inclined toward sinister overinterpretations. Still, his vehemence made his
words stick like double-sided tape. What if hes right? I
found myself thinking as I unclasped the lead and divested myself of baggies.
Have I been telling Satan about picking up the dry cleaning?
Oh, for Gods sake, I countered instantly.
We do this because the human brain is wired for dialogue and
relationship. And because the dry cleanings been sitting there for two
weeks. Satans cause is hardly advanced.
Still, I was mindful, for the next few days, every time I talked
to myself. Mainly, I realized, I was living out loud, muttering the sorts of
things Id tell other humans if I werent afraid of boring them.
Its the same reason we talk to our animals, or to babies who are happy
just to listen to the melody. It gets lonely in that gray world inside our
heads, and all the mundane bits of life seem to flow better when we pronounce
our plans, vent our amusement, project our wishes into the air.
Its about connecting to the world, not communing with fallen
angels. From infancy, humans utter sounds and watch for others response.
As children, we learn to see ourselves in silhouette, outlined by contrast with
those around us. Soon everything is relational -- even rebellion -- and
alienation only makes sense as an absence of connectedness.
Some of us take this relatedness into ourselves, connecting
through our thoughts and prayers and mutterings, and requiring little chitchat.
Sometimes the introversion goes too far. I have a friend so solitary she folds
her arms tight across her chest to ward off the sign of peace. Yet even she is
acutely aware of other peoples needs and responses, and deeply loyal to
the few she allows into her heart.
We are all, like it or not, contingent beings, defined and
anchored -- or shattered -- by each other. Psychologists have learned to heed
and even measure the limbic resonance that starts us off in the
world: the attunement with the caregiver that literally sets our bodily rhythms
and wires our brains. If its present in abundance, it sharpens our
cognition, builds trust and empathy, connects us. Doesnt work for
lizards. Stare into their eyes and the blankness will chill you. But when a
mammal stares into her babys eyes, they find each other -- and when a
human mother gazes lovingly and consistently, she can literally change her
babys mind.
In the eyes of a child whos been severely neglected, though,
you see none of this echo, this soul-forming, reciprocal awareness. Such a
child has had no chance to connect, no experience of harmony, no reason to
trust another person up close. And when scientists scan the childs brain,
theyll find neurons missing by the billion. Love develops connections
within our brains; its absence leaves us solitary, unfeeling and vicious, ruled
by neural impulses we cannot control.
For someone who grows up that deprived, or falls into the grip of
a psychosis that zaps the old connections, its hard even to pray. Because
every time we reach out to an invisible Creator, or to reach deep inside for a
wisdom not our own, were drawing on precedent, on the relational,
resonant way of being that human love has taught us.
If we live long enough, and experience that love fully enough, it
will teach us that everythings already connected. So when were
talking to ourselves were really talking to God -- even though we
wouldnt dare to presume it, let alone bore the Creator with our dry
cleaning.
If we dont feel God inside us, if we cant make that
connection, were left with our own emptiness, and all we can hope to do
is play the devils advocate.
Jeannette Batz is a staff writer for The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis. Her e-mail address is
Jeannette.batz@rftstl.com
National Catholic Reporter, October 5,
2001
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