Me, too, phouka. Sheesh, I never once thought that phrase had anything to do with mommy issues, and I have, ah, plenty of my own issues with mine. I always figured it was more like Simon and Garfunkel’s “I am a rock; I am an iiiiiiiiisland.”
Concur that I have never once heard this phrase IRL outside of cliched media.
Right on! Of course, making a dent in the population of some towns is likely to be the reason people want me dead.
Also, speaking of birth and death, there’s nothing wrong with being naked. You’re naked under your clothes, you’re born naked, and you die naked (if you plan it right).
Everyone leaves the womb and is confronted with the outside world. Compared to the comfort felt inside the mother, the outside world is scary and unpleasant. A baby is no longer able to rely on the complete and total care of the mother - they are “alone.”
When you die, your subjective consciousness, and yours alone, faces death. No matter who or what is around you, they aren’t coming with you. You are going to face death “alone.”
I’d be surprised if anyone ever uttered the phrase and meant -physically- alone.
I have nightmares about that.
Ok
This isn’t about mommy issues.
Although I do think it is a slap in the face to mothers.
I have never heard a woman say it, only men.
I had an ex who used to say it all the time, it was his mantra for life. Every time he’d say it I’d ask where he thought his mother was while he was coming into the world?
I thought it was annoying, and disrespectful to his mother, but I also felt there was an undertone of “I don’t need you or anybody else in my life, so don’t ever think you mean all that much to me.”
So when I hear a man say that I think that it is disrespectful to his mother and I wonder if that disrespect carries over into his other relationships with women.
Sah-guy said it to me during an argument yesterday.
As far as I can recall, I have never heard anyone say that they “came into this world alone and will go out of this world alone,” so I’m having trouble understanding in what context someone would say it, or why.
It strikes me as a profoundly sad thing to say: that one is fundamentally alone in this life, and is and will forever be incapable of forming bonds with other people.
Yes, and if we’re alone in birth and alone in death, then we’re alone for everything in between. And it’s true, intimacy only goes so far. But we’d have to really redefine what alone means.
It’s not that we are incapable of forming bonds - it is that when it really comes down to it, relationships don’t change the fact that you are the only one who is a guaranteed constant in your own life.
It has always struck me as a Western way to frame the meaning also held in a precept of Buddhism: Life is Suffering.
It is basically an Existentialist comment.
I don’t know why you would think that.
Excuse me while I go jump out a window.
I don’t see it as a depressing thing. I see it as a call to really get to know the one person who will always be there for me. And doing so makes it so much easier to get to know other people.
Shrug. My mother committed suicide and left me alone.
(Her pain was too great for her to cope with. It took me years to understand.)
How about: “Don’t judge others for their feelings and beliefs?” Too liberal, I guess.
Never even heard of Emily Carr until this thread.
I never thought about it as a profound statement, whenever I have heard it used it was in the context of “I don’t need you, I don’t need anybody, I’m alone and I like it that way, fuck the world”.
Nor have I ever heard of Emily Carr and I’ve never taken this statement as deep - again, *I’ve *never heard it spoken IRL- just as some whiney wannabe badass’s attempt at showing the world , uh, exactly what you said. I guess my only question is why someone would think that’s an even remotely original, meaningful thing to say. I was only half kidding before; if someone said that to me I’d be holding back the laughter while thinking of an equally trite comeback.
“Well, Morgan, then you better get busy living or get busy dying” :rolleyes:
(rolly eyes directed at comment, not at sahirrnee)
Sand and Water by Beth Neilson Chapman. For her, it’s a song about losing he husband and moving through grief.
StG
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were no other person in the world who views that line as having anything at all to do with mothers, much less being disrespectful toward them.
I certainly think so.
Not so literally. For crying out loud, it’s a figure of speech, a saying. It seems like you’re going out of your way to find offense when none is there, and to read a meaning into that isn’t even remotely relevant to what people have in mind when they say that.
And here I suspect is some insight as to why you find it so grating.
I think I’ve heard that expression once or twice in my entire life. And I’ve been here a long, long time.
I’ve heard it or variations a few times in passing. It came across either as something that would be said by some pale, skinny teen who wears lots of black and cuts themselves, or as some “I’ve done everything for myself and nobody’s ever cared about me” Randian claim of utter self sufficiency & selfishness.
Wow - it is typically not meant that way at all. Much more of a “there is nothing out there; and no one can experience life from your point of view.” It may be uttered by beret-wearing philosophers trying to sound deep, but that doesn’t change the fact that, as a statement “we enter and exit life alone” is meant to convey the burden we all have, and that any support we get is illusory or could disappear at any time.
So, in other words, it is more the *opposite *of your definition - it is not “I proudly state my aloneness,” it is “we are alone and nothing can change that.”
Whereas I find the phrase, “You came into the world alone and you will go out alone.” sort of comforting.
To me it shows that as terrified, sad and helpless as someone might be of their impending death, they have to remember that when you were born into this unknown world, you also were also crying and terrified and felt helpless.
For me, this puts birth and death into perspective - a leap into the unknown. Alone at the beginning, and alone at the end.
Makes sense. I suppose I find it sort of comforting, too, in the way that the Buddhism statement of “Life is Suffering” is comforting. The only way to real peace is finding a way to accept the reality of these statements and building off of that acceptance; trying to deny or avoid them is false at the foundation.