Introverts Love Mountains
In Virginia Woolf's feminist lecture A Room of One's Own, she articulates what seems to be a common truth for most people, introvert, extrovert and ambivert alike: that people need both the physical and mental space to be undisturbed if they are to generate their best creative work. While critics have pointed out that her treatise on the creative needs of literary women was an elitist argument based on her limited experience which failed to consider women who were not "independently wealthy," as she was, she still broke important ground.
Woolf's premise focused on access to a private environment conducive to creating works of fiction, but in this brief musing I will expand upon that idea and ask, what about a seemingly more universal need to access a space which simply affords us peace and quiet? What does that space look like? Usually, when people talk about finding peace and quiet, they bring up a pristine concept of nature in which they can finally connect with their inner selves. If this is the space where we can most effectively attain that mindset, does having access to this space connect us with an even higher purpose of protecting that environment which fulfills and sustains us?Not everyone has had or will ever have access to the kind of environment I had growing up. I didn't have to bus 30 minutes to a park or drive an hour out of town to find tranquility and greenery. I had only to walk out my backdoor and was immediately immersed in 132 acres of peaceful, secluded woodland. Within five minutes I could feel like I was fifty miles away from power lines, houses, road noise and any other trace of human life, save for the odd can oxidizing into the rust-colored carpet of leaves. Having had that early exposure to capital N "Nature", I am eternally pining for an aural, visual and olfactory distance from our industrialized, capitalist society shaped on the model of planned obsolescence.
In our increasingly urbanized, digitally connected world it feels like a luxury to have a space of "one's own"; that is, a space to be alone. Given our near-constant connection with other humans through phone, email and physical proximity, it may not seem that many people actually desire much personal space. We may be social creatures on the whole, spending up to 80% of our waking hours communicating, but are we such slaves to the machinations of our modern era that we have completely obliterated that very human instinct towards nature, and, taking it a step further, spiritual seeking? Prayer is, in many religions, an inward-facing, solitary action. So is sleep and thinking and making decisions. We are alone in our heads unless we are communicating thoughts or listening. Why then, when we need so much solitary time to accomplish these things, do we so readily give much of our personal time to thoughts of others who vie for our attention via text, email, and the general river of information that people go to splash in day in, day out..etc.?
Other related thoughts I am still processing:
Poor millennials are trying to live closer to employment opportunities in urban centers and are crowding in rental homes to do so. Home ownership rates are at a 50-year low....where do we find a connection to the land amidst all this? What about sustainable urban planning, green spaces, increased access to "wild nature" from cities for folks w/o cars? Does this democratized space make for a sense of collective ownership and common resolve to protect those spaces?
Introverts love mountains:
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