She Chose the Cage
"A guy needs somebody-to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick."
Sawyer wants to believe that "every man for himself" works as a philosophy of life. But we all know that deep down he knows that "live together, die alone" is what he needs. There is probably a piece of Sawyer in all of us that wants to make it on our own and would like for everybody else to do the same. On paper, it sometimes sounds easier not to need or be needed. Have you ever denied others access to yourself, chosen the lonely road, and suffered for it? Have you ever allowed others in or stuck beside someone, even when it was difficult to do so, and experienced the benefits of togetherness?
Amazingly and powerfully, Kate taught Sawyer a lesson when she chose the cage over her freedom. With or without romantic love, she demonstrated to us all the life or death value of remaining in community.
24 Comments:
Hey, y'all.
I thought this latest episode was wonderful, and it really hit hard about how we connect to others. I have personally closed myself off from others, going the "every man for himself way" because it always seemed to me like that's the way I was treated. After having been betrayed so many times, it seemed like everyone only cared for themselves and I decided I wouldn't care for them either. I spent a couple years like that, and only through the help of my friends did I realize that living together was what made life worthwhile. These days, I am totally the opposite, caring for others with no regard for myself (perhaps to a fault).
"Every man for himself" is a lonely road to travel. For me, the hardest thing about not having anyone was lack of motivation. When you are only working to help yourself, then as long as things aren't bad, you're satisfied, not caring to make things better. (Or at least I am). When I have someone else to care for, who is a part of my life, or a partner, then I have more motivation. I worked harder my last 2.5 years of college than I worked the first 1.5 because I had my fiancee with me, and I wasn't doing it so much for myself as I was for her.
Someone alone can shield himself from the possibility of pain from others. When people bond and develop relationships, however we become greater. I'm not doing a good job of explaining it, so I'll use a quote from my favorite musical group, the country music duo Big & Rich. When asking about their partnership, Big Kenny said (paraphrased), "Before we met we were just two men, but when we came together we became ten... or at least four. We doubled our own efforts. And when you think about it, it never is just him and me it's always us... and if everyone would think of it that way, why, there'd never be any war, everyone would have food to eat, a roof over their heads, and have enough." People acting together enable each other to do things they could never do on their own.
I think "Live together, die alone" is a great phrase/motto. At first I thought it was a downer because of the die alone part, but I realize it's not that you "live together and then die alone later" it's that you "live together or otherwise you're going to die alone" and I think that is the truth. It also goes hand in hand with my personal motto of "Love Everybody".
Gyar...
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Hi Guys,
Yeah, that's me all over. As a child I moved house a lot and spent 11 years in boarding school and then went straight away to University. It made me a very independent person but it also made me a bit of a loner. Because we moved house quite a bit and other than the holidays, i was away, I had no friends at home and at 13 I changed schools to one 500 miles away so I lost contact with pretty much all my school friends (this was in the pre email and text days). I also changed Jobs quite abit as an adult (I kept being made redundnat Grr) so I got into the habit of never forming strong relationships becasue I knew I would just move on (hey I sound a bit like the Littlest Hobo!). I guess I have always had a bit of an outsider complex and it is only in the last few years that I have started to settle down and put down roots. Luckily I have some very good friends that I met at university, whom I see regularly (even though they live 200 miles away) but then my parents live 600 miles away.
I do like time to my own but I am also a very social person. I think that everything has a price and that is certainly true with relationships. The advantage of being alone is there is no one to let you down, no chance of a broken heart or betrayal BUT those things are the price that you pay for the love, support, friendship etc you gain from a relationship. It's a bit like pets, they give you so much joy and love but at some point they are going to die and the grief can be terrible (especially for a dog or cat) but that's the cost of loving.
Love Pirate I like your motto, I always try and make people smile, the more people the better, and it's really good with complete strangers, the person on the bus next to you, a fellow driver, the girl at the checkout etc.
I tried distancing myself from the world. It was a miserable failure. I think somewhere along the way I thought it was a sign of weakness to need other people. It's true that sometimes they let me down, but more often than not, just leaning on someone made me feel better and stronger than I was on my own. It took me a long time to let them in and lean on them as much as they leaned on me. (I wonder why that's harder sometimes to ask for help or let others be generous than it is to GIVE assistance?)
Two things have cemented these feelings of community in my mind. One is the Indigo Girls lyric "multiply life by the power of two", and the other is my beau saying "rather than being one comprised of two, we are the strength of one plus one". I think maybe I was fearful I'd lose myself in there someplace. But it's just the opposite. It's made me stronger to learn I have back up.
Great thoughts! Who knew looking back to see how much I've changed would make the NOW seem so much better than I'd realized?
DA, you could have been writing about me in your words about your early years. And I was an only child until I was seven, so the syblings that came after me weren't really able to connect with me until they got much older, contributing to my loner development. Now we're best friends tho.
I've always been a loner too and I kind of liked it that way. On the one hand, I do like people, am fascinated by them, and very much enjoy learning from others. But on the other, it just seemed like for most of my life, people always made my life more complicated! I think that before I had better self-esteem (like, in my 40s) I let other people make too many decisions for my life, and that was wrong. Also, sometimes people butt in and try to take over, and then what you're trying to do you can't do your way. So one of my mottos is the saying that if you want something done right, do it yourself, and don't even ask for help! :-)
In the end, and in middle-age, I have learned that even though my natural tendency is to be a hermit and a loner, I also try to balance that out by making sure to be with other humans, so as to widen my experiences and learn from their lives and perspectives. When I do step out and take the plunge (I also was painfully shy until about 40) I am able to learn so much from other people (as much as what NOT to do, as of what TO do). And I have had so much fun learning from everyone during the TLEC blogging, which was my first time ever for doing that. I've emailed and lurked like crazy up to now, but never participated in a blog outside of "network conferencing" at work.
I too like the "Live together,..." saying, it sounds much better than the "United we stand,...." saying, even though they both say about the same thing. And it is strange to look back and to see how much you have developed or changed over the years. "Love Everyone" is a very important concept to live by as well, and I often wonder why there aren't 11 Commandments, after the Bible states that Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment, to love one another". And to connect that to our subject of alone vs. not alone, there isn't really anythihg wrong with being a loner or a hermit, but you can't "love one another", unless you go out into the world to meet those others and show them love.
Slowly getting back in to blogging...
Kvonhard: from last thread RE John Locke's emotional neediness - That's how I read him too. I don't think his mistake was to trust the officer. I think it was to trust the people in the commune. They called themselves family but then turned on him because he did something "wrong." He should have known better. There were signs his new "family" wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Emotional neediness is not wrong or bad but it can be taken too far if one lacks appropriate boundaries. This week we seem to be talking about the opposite problem. Interesting juxtapositioning of episodes. Last week - settling for low quality relationships, creating a false sense of belonging. This week - rejecting relationships, creating a false sense of self-sufficiency. Only Sawyer's rejection of true community was thwarted by Kate. You go, girl!
Another thought came to me as I was posting on the TLC. It sure didn't take very long for our trio of loners -- Jack, Kate, and Sawyer -- to start thinking as a team after they got brought back to the Hydra. [[Even though Jack is not a loner per se, I think of him as such because of the way he began to push Locke away and was unwilling to share island responsibilities with him]] I believe that they were all yelling about where their "friends" were, especially Jack. And Sawyer's comment this week about "our team" was good for him to say. Although he could still be thinking of himself as being the "new sheriff in town" when he gets back to Lostville, that was a big step for his character, as TPTB are portraying him. It was also nice to see Kate be not willing to leave somone behind, even though she could have at least attempted an escape.
But obviously, certain shared conflict can bring otherwise opposing forces together, in the old vein of "my enemy's enemy is my friend". And through a shared fight for life, cultural rivals can become lifelong comrads the way soldiers do after sharing combat together. Not to mention that when you are in a jam, two or more heads can be better than one, for brainstorming a solution to a problem.
I have a close friend that people have asked me how we get along as well as we do. I tell them how we both took the same course in college at the same time, a class for Spanish majors taught in Spanish using Spanish literature. We were study buddies. We studied 11 hours together for the final and still didn't get A's. But we did get a life-long friendship that survives our differences. Now we're the ones who will take each others' kids if something happens to either of us and our husbands.
If a class can do that much for two people, imagine what the *island* can do?
I finally watched the episode. I wanted to thank Admin for the great pick of topic and title for this post. "She chose the cage," what a great example of love in action. It makes me think about who in my life I might be reluctant to love because it inconveniences me and challenges me to get beyond that.
I'm keeping up, lurking away, but reading with great interest. Many good points, and all well stated.
Do I isolate myself? I try to achieve balance with my alone time and my social time. I know I need to be with people, to give and receive from them, but I also know that I must be alone too. I am more than my relationships, and if I am never alone I cannot listen to my heart speak.
This weekend is a good example. I was invited to 2 "parties" this weekend, one a no-occasion-let's-celebrate-our-friendship party of women, and a Pampered Chef party. I really didn't want to go and be with people. I was cranky and just wanted to be left alone, withdraw. But it turned out that I needed to give a ride to 2 women (one for each party) and so I accepted the invite. I had such a great time! I realized I had been isolating myself for a few months and sorely needed to get around people, give something of myself, be available. It was good to laugh again.
I feel sorry for Sawyer. He has so much hurt inside. The little boy who witnessed his mom's murder and his dad's suicide is still crying. He tries to stay angry so he won't feel the pain, but he can't. And so he hurts others so he can make them hate him. He chose the cage too, one of his own making.
Capcom, remember that Jesus summed up the 10 commandments in two sentences. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength (Commands 1-4) and Love your neighbor as yourself(5-10). But then Jesus replaced the second sentence with Love one another as I have loved you. Instead of loving others as yourself we are to love as He loved. Our loving God above all was not changed, but the way we love others was raised to a higher standard.
And you are so right when you say we need to get out there and love others, not just love them from a distance, cause that isn't love. Love without action is dead.
Twinkle, glad to hear DD is doing well without the pacifier. Stay the course, these things do take time and firm consistency. And she will learn to comfort herself to sleep. She will. It may be the longest two weeks of your life, but it will happen.
I am praying for you.
;)
Hi Guys,
Some great comments, especially with regards to Sawyer, one of my favorite characters. We really saw that deep down Sawyer is a good guy, behind all that defensive anger, I thought the ou team comment was great, it came, I think from the genuine Sawyer, he said it without realising that despite his selfish loner act he actually felt part of a community.
There is certainly an element of 'put them all through hell together and they'll bond' with the Losties experience, although I wonder what would happen to the relationships forged between the Losties if they were suddenly rescued? From my experience of military training from my youth the 'put 'em all through hell' tactic works but I found the intence relationships only lasted whilst you were in that environment (no that might just be me). Once the external pressure was removed the bond was to a degree removed. Of course this might be different with an experience as intense as the survivors, certainly they say that the relationships forged between soldiers in combat is more intense than any other relationship and the bonds are stronger than those between spouses.
amused2behere I totally know what you mean about not going to parties, I'm like that sometimes, I just went to stay at home watching TV (or more likely going on line) but if I actually go out I have a really good time).
I think relationships are a funny thing, sometimes you can meet someone in passing and become really good friends, other times you can be really good friends with people for a while and then drift away. For example, our closest friends are a couple we knew from our university days and we have grown closer over the years, whilst another friend whom I have from the same time, I still keep in contact with but I have very little in common with any more, I'm a left wing, green pacifist and he's right wing, very environmentally unfriendly and is into guns and hunting, it's almost as though we keep in contact because we feel we should.
Coley I'm with you with the Music thing, Music has certainly helped me get through parts of my life and I get genuinly inspired and empowered by music (all sorts - I'm into Rock, Folk, Metal, Classical, Hip Hop etc etc)
Capcom I'm completely with you with what your saying about being a loner, although I have to say I didn't suffer overly with other people making decisions for me (well outside eduction anyway). Certainly as an adult all my mistakes have been of my own making - d'oh ;)
Twinke - I agree with amused2behere it's great when the kids go off to sleep without a fuss, it took a long time with our eldest but was worth it and we got in practice so we had no problems with Ben . Saying that, Jack our eldest has now decided that he is afraid of the dark - oh joy!
I think its funny how much some of us have in common. Just wanted to pitch in that I too am a loner who somehow always seems to enjoy parties.
I truly am energized and refreshed by time alone. I love contemplative thinking. I love reflecting. I love reading and journaling and walking by myself. I love going an entire day without speaking. All these things just feel right to me and I often have a hard time "re-entering" a world filled with other people who want to talk. However, I learned something earlier this year...I found that my mind and body are strengthened and refueled by solitude but that my emotions become dry and calloused when I live the lonely life in excess. I discovered this year that the key to my emotional health is being with people...I never knew that before. I always thought that solitude would refill my emotional tank too.
Before this discovery, I felt like going to a party and enjoying myself was like a betrayal of my character. Now I see the necessity of group fun. I've learned that a part of me needs to be out and about and engaging with others in a strictly social manner. I've had to give myself permission to enjoy being around other people and have sometimes had to discipline myself to "get out there".
To bring this back to Sawyer...He is one of the most playful characters on the show. He has a way of lightening the mood in tense moments. Even though he is a loner in many ways, he is also probably the most socially adept survivor of them all. He is a magnificently well-rounded character and would be even moreso if he would just give himself permission to engage with others on a deeper more honest level.
Wow, I can't believe that you all feel about parties sometimes the way I do! :-D And it's like the word Serendipity.....like you said, once I go I'm pleasantly surprised that I have a pretty good time and I'm glad that I went after all. But sometimes I agonize about whether to go, and also on the way there. I think that is just some leftover roots of painful shyness that I still have to deal with though.
That's true about the 10 Commandments, Amused, thanks.
I also agree with you all about Sawyer. And I truly believe that in spite of the awful things that he's done in his adult life (no excuses) it's a shame, because we know that the only reason he's like that is because of what he saw as a child. He is not a natural born criminal with a screw loose in his brain that makes him like that. He could have grown up to be a normal, well adjusted person, if not for his childhood trauma. And because he is the way that you all explained, a person like that would be constantly at odds with himself, fighting the need to be good and the need (because of his memories and to push people away) to be bad. Someone in the show (Kate?) got it right when they said that Sawyer tries to make people hate him.
But he's so much more fun as not a normal, well adjusted person. ;-) Since he's not a real person I can be flippant. If the childhood trauma hadn't messed him up, something else or his own choices would have. After all, the best of us are only *partly* well adjusted people. But feel free to disagree with me on that.
Well to weigh in on my loner style, I definitely had that going on in highschool while at the same time being very social. Everyone thought I was an extrovert. When I married my husband, the mostly introvert, I started withdrawing too and it was a very healing time for me. Then there was the year that my husband travelled and we saw each other only on weekends. I was in my first teaching job (middle school Spanish and ESL, neither of which I was technically certified for) and completely crashed. Wow! That was a year I learned to depend on God! Anyway, that year I felt my old self from highschool and my new introverted self morph into something that felt more like me. Now when I take a test like Meyers Briggs I fall square in the in between zone.
Now as a new mom I can identify three states of existence, solitude - time to just be, think, or pray, social - I'm the one that often forces my husband out to do things, and family - falls somewhere in between being social and having solitude, or else it's something different. If I am short on anyone of those three, a part of me starts to itch inside. Know what I mean? Praise God for helping (and ironing ;-) husbands who make my balanced life possible.
RE: The Disappearing Pacie - so far so good. She's sleeping less but has also self-corrected. What with the time change everything is a little bit up in the air right now, but we're slowly settling back into something peaceful. Thanks for your prayers!
RE: Afraid of the Dark Preschoolers - Yep, been there too. We have a emergency light that turns on and off with the dark and can be used as a flashlight if the power goes out. That's helped a lot. We've also had to start leaving his bedroom door open when we tuck him in. Actually we let him choose and he always chooses to leave it open.
Hey y'all,
Haven't posted since Thursday, and just wanted to toss my thoughts in there. I think there has been great discussion on this (as always), and this is a topic I find especially interesting. Everyone has a different outlook on themselves and their relationships, and I find it all fascinating.
For myself, I was a "loner" all through middle and high school, and my first year of college. This was slightly by choice but mostly due to the people who shunned and scorned me. I was completely withdrawn, not able to reach out to anyone. All I had were my own thoughts to keep me company, and all those thoughts were only sad and depressing. When I went to college things stayed the same way, and while I enjoyed having time to myself, it was empty feeling.
I finally made the choice to stop that lifestyle, and to get out and be social. I joined a Christian organization and began to develop relationships with people. I met my fiancee shortly thereafter.
What I have come to realize about who I am now is that I define my life based on my relationships; that is how I measure myself, and what I get the most enjoyment and fulfillment from. I no longer need or want the time alone, because I find that I am able to take all that I am and put it into my relationships, and I become more. Wow, that didn't come out nearly as clearly as it was in my head. Basically, my relationships are everything to me. To put it simply... who would I choose the cage for? everyone.
I guess this was supposed to be a response to when amused said "I am more than my relationships, and if I am never alone I cannot listen to my heart speak." For me, my relationships are more than I am, in fact, they are all that I am. Without them I am nothing, and anything my heart were to say would have no meaning. My heart speaks louder with others I love than it ever did to just myself. My relationships give my life meaning.
I can certainly appreciate the need to define oneself apart from others, and I have had to do that many times in my life. But as I am now, I no longer need to, because that is unimportant to me, or at least, nowhere near as important as my relationships.
I hope all that made sense. I love that we can come here to discuss our lives and how Lost has made us look at things we wouldn't necessarily look at. And keep in mind, I would choose the cage for any of you as well.
Gyarr...
Hi Guys
Admin said,
I found that my mind and body are strengthened and refueled by solitude but that my emotions become dry and calloused when I live the lonely life in excess.
Wow, that's brilliant David, I certainly need to recharge myself with solitude. I especially like to stand on top of a high hill in stormy weather, strong winds and rain really blow away the cobwebs!
Whilst I agree that relationships are important in my life I don't think they define me, more that they compliment me. Whilst I change and adapt as I get older and wiser and obviously my relationsips, especially with my wife and children have a massive impact on me, my individual indentity transcends that. I existed prior to those relationships and I will continue to exist beyond them (i.e. once my body has gone to the worms). Mmmn probably getting a bit metaphysical here....
Love Pirate Yes, count me in to, I'll be staying in my bear cage!
I just wanted to add to my last post, that I hate "parties" and that I'm not a social person at all. I choose to have a small number of close friends rather than a bunch of acquaintances.
I choose to have a small number of close friends instead of a larger group, but I have a friend who can manage soo many relationships at the same time! Oddly enough it's the woman that I became friends with through my Death by Spanish class that I mentioned above. She rarely has time to be online much. Maybe that's why most people here including myself are mostly loner, non-socialite types?
So I've gotten in the habit of using her skill at maintaining a large network of friends to my advantage. If I meet someone that I want to stay in contact with and I feel that I can't on my own, I introduce them to this friend. Then she invites them to girls' gatherings, book club, etc... and the person stays in my life in a circumspect way. Maybe that's manipulative? Dunno. Anyway it works. I didn't want to lose contact with a woman from my home state who played Euchre like I do but when I left the church we attended I knew we'd drift apart and lose contact. So we got this friend from my old church to start coming to bookclub with my social friend so I got to see her a few times a year. Now 6 years later, my old friend is expecting her first baby, we have much more in common, and we've started playing cards again occassionally. Isn't that great!? What would I do without a friend who knew how to manage a large number of relationships? And hopefully I help her by showing that it's ok to stay home once in a while. :-)
There was a big spread in my science magazine last month about the internet and how it's changing relationships and the way people think. The series was called "Living Online." Connected Like Never Before gives an overview. My husband also forwarded me this article about Web 2.0, post-modernism and the web.
My favorite excerpt is from the article "I'll have to ask my friends" about ways online connectivity is changing the way we think and act.
...we learn about what everyone else thinks by reading highly polarised opinions that encourage choosing sides rather than thinking things through. You can give media culture a positive spin and say that people are more socially enmeshed, but it has a darker side: as a feeling emerges, people share the feeling to see if they have the feeling. And sometimes they don't have the feeling until they check if other people have it too. This kind of behaviour used to be associated with early adolescents, with their need for validation...
The challenge for this generation is to think of sociality as more than the cyber-intimacy of sharing gossip and photographs and profiles. This is a paradoxical time. We have more information but take less time to think it through in its complexity. We're connecting globally but talking parochially....It is a concern when self-expression becomes more important than social action.
Sincerely, I hope that when all is said and done, and they decide to bring the final resolution to the tale of LOST, we do find ourselves a real-life room and meet face to face. Now *that* would be cool.
amused2behere yes it would be cool to meet everyone here, and I am sure we'd all be quite suprised (pleasently I hoped). However as we seem to be spread across The US, Canada, UK, Australia etc it might be a bit difficult! I actually quite like this as way to get to know people, every so often a poster reveals something about themselves and you think wow .... is a guy or 'oh, so that's what you do' or like with Dr. Spongebob no one realised how young he was.
I must agree that I have a small group of friends, however Twinkle your friend sounds very useful, I might have to borrow her! :P
Kvonhard I know what you mean, I have certainly had a reputation as outgoing but I'm actually really shy.It's funny though, I love public speaking, I am always the first to speak at meetings and I love standing up in front of people and talking, or even better being on TV (I once made an idiot of myself infront of 5 million TV viewers!), I've even done the Full Monty in public (my wifes 21st birthday) BUT ask me to go round and ask the neighbours to borrow some sugar, no way I'm too shy and I am terrible at small talk, my Dad will (and does) talk to anyone but I am far too shy - go figure!
I agree with Swayer that Humor is a mask, he has a problem with anyone getting close to him, not surprising, the two people he loved, his parents were killed, then when he finally found love agin with Cassidy he was burnt, he is too scared of relationships, it is easier to be a loner, so he goes outof his way to make people hate him (like the treefrog incident) as it easier to deal with people that hate you.
For me, humor has been a coping mechanism. I don't think I could have survived things I have survived without it. I also found that if I made a joke about myself before anyone else could, it cut the teasing and mockind off at the pass.
I also agree with the idea of having smaller groups of closer friends than a big gaggle. That's me, as well. I just kind of get overwhelmed at large gatherings, and find closer knit friendships to be the most rewarding.
I wonder if someone like Sawyer, who has only seen so much bad of the world and the worst in people, doesn't hone that ironic sense of humor because he's become a student of human nature. He can often see what people will do, and then say or do something to get the reaction he's going for. Or just get a rise out of them because he can, maybe?
Even though I know other people who watch LOST, it doesn't seem like any of them want to talk about things like this here. I'm often accused of living too much in my head, or thinking too much though. I'm just pleasantly happy to see I'm not the only one who does that sometimes.
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