Divine Surveillance

144 words

Sometimes I wonder if all the technological options we have to escape our solitude— all the ways we can publish our thoughts or seemingly connect with friends or strangers— may have pushed us to the point of being unable to think or say anything unless we believe someone is listening.

“God the Father,” by and anonymous painting in the Spanish School, 16th century.

Then again it was only after I stopped believing that God was always watching me that I began to understand what privacy was, and how privacy created solitude, and how a sufficiently deep solitude created thoughts that could bloom into stories, but if you’re secluded enough to invent stories, then your thoughts eventually begin to examine themselves, to examine existence itself, a philosophical vortex that could be alleviated, immediately and somewhat permanently, by believing entirely in the existence of God.

Oh, solitude, the very best thing on earth, and solitude, to hell with it.