Prom: "No Man is an Island"

All mankind is of one author. . .
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.

The student body theme for my senior year was "No man is an island, no man stands alone."  Ironically, during much of the year I felt very much like an island.

The theme comes from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne, written in December of 1623.  Donne was a metaphysical poet and a cleric of the Church of England.  Meditation XVII contains the phrases "No man is an island" and "for whom the bell tolls."

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind;
And therefore never send to know
For whom the bells tolls,
It tolls for thee.

One meaning taken from Donne's meditation is that humans do not thrive when they are isolated from others.  If true, there may be exceptions.

"They say 'no man is an island'; well, Neil is kind of an island," said Michael Collins of his fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong. "Sometimes what he is thinking and his inner thoughts were more interesting to him than somebody else's thoughts were to him, so why should he leave his island, go wading out into the shallows to shake hands with somebody, when he's perfectly happy back in his little grass hut or wherever."

If there are exceptions, I do not feel that I am one of them.  I had felt like an outcast for a long time, and then, during my junior year, I made many new friends.  At first I was happy just to have those new friends, but during my senior year I began to feel more and more isolated.

It began at the senior party the Saturday before the start of the school year; I was talking with a friend when, during a momentary silence that felt awkward to me, she said she was going to go mingle.  For some reason that bothered me.  Later, I was tossing a Frisbee with another boy when his girlfriend joined us.  After a few minutes they walked off together, leaving me standing there by myself.  It was a bit surreal.

There were other times when I went somewhere with friends only to find myself alone.  Even when I was with my friends, I felt like I was stuck out on the edge of everything.  It seemed that my quiet personality created a barrier -- a coral reef, if you will -- between me and my friends.  If Neil Armstrong was happy back in his little grass hut, I was not happy in mine.  I wanted, sometimes desperately, to leave my island to be a part of what was going on, even as I was sitting in the middle of the group!

One day after school, I was walking with Sally down the fifth floor hallway -- she was kindly giving me a ride home that day.  I said something about needing my friends and then asked if my friends needed me? She thought for a moment and then said she did not know.  As an introvert, I tend to overthink things, and this made for a miserable few days.

I wanted to talk some more with Sally the next afternoon, but missed her before she left for home.  So I called her up and we had a nice chat.  Having had some more time to think about my question, she had some thoughts that helped me feel better about a lot of different things. She also gave me the following scripture, Helaman 5:12, to help me:

“And now my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.”

If we build our foundations with God, or on his rock, all that the devil can throw at us won’t get us down, or into the depths of despair.  For a few days this seemed to help, but then a mighty storm broke when Julie stood me up and I sent that goodbye letter.  The storm continued to rage even as I took Evelyn to the Junior Prom.

While Julie and I debated what a friend was supposed to be, I began to wonder at the very meaning of friendship.  At times, I may have expected too much from my friends, but at other times I doubted that I had a right to any expectations at all.  I had wanted to have friends for such a long time, but now that I had them, I did not know what to do with them.  I felt that I had not been able to develop important social skills, thus I was socially clueless.  I had mastered the ability to smile and give a friendly greeting, but it seemed that I could do little else.

Once or twice, when feeling down, I had called Evelyn up to have a chat.  She was always happy to talk, but I could not find the words to describe what I was feeling.  In the end, Evelyn did most of the talking; it must have been frustrating for her, but I was also frustrated.  I was feeling a strong need to talk to a friend, but had no words; I was filled with emotion, but my voice was stilled.  This only served to deepen the feelings of loneliness I was experiencing.

At one point I concluded that it was preferable -- safer -- to avoid a conversation.  On a Friday night in February, after the prom, John drove me home from a basketball game at the school.  Evelyn was also in the car and she must have noticed that I was feeling down because she asked me if I was okay.  I wanted desperately to tell her how lonely I was, and about the war of words between Julie and I.  I wanted to say that despite having so many friends, some of them very good friends, that I had been feeling very alone for several months. Yet I was afraid, not of rejection, but of not having the words, so I did not open up and the moment passed.  I said I was fine and got out of the car.

Like the prom, where I was inundated with feelings about Julie, after already feeling self conscious about being so quiet through dinner, it was another lost moment.  As the crisis with Julie stretched into the second half of February, I felt that I could not go to my friends.  While I believed they would be willing, I worried that I would be unable to convey what I felt.  This left me well and truly alone.

Somehow, things got better.  I cannot say for certain how, but my senior year improved.  Time passed, spring arrived, and I moved on.  If I felt that I could not go to my friends, I still received love and acceptance from them; a moment here, a moment there -- like that day not long after the prom, when Evelyn sat with me at lunch and made my day.

All mankind is of one author. . .
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.

Even when we feel that we are alone, we are never truly alone.