Alone

Carl Jung said, the highest most decisive experience is to be alone with one's own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you. When you find that you cannot support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible Foundation. And so this is where we start. I have zero followers, I have zero audience members. And in order to build an indestructible foundation, this is the perfect place to start from nothing. Today, we will explore one important contemplation how to be alone. Welcome to the revolution.

Hello beautiful humans, welcome to the midlife revolution. I'm Megan Connor, your host. And before we start talking about how to be alone, I first wanted to talk a little bit about the name of the podcast and how we got here. I know most people tend to think about midlife as a certain age or a certain stage of life. But for me, I believe that midlife begins when we finally decide to stop the treadmill that was handed to us in the beginning of our life. I like to think of my life as a song. And the first verse was written by my parents and my teachers and all the other adults in my life that had certain expectations for how things should go. And I like to think of the second verse as what started when I decided to step off the treadmill and look around me and start making changes in my life. That were the things that I wanted to do for myself, and not necessarily for other people. For me, the second verse, didn't start until are well into my marriage when I had six kids. And I was just trying to make things work as a mother. And as an employee, I was a teacher for a long time. And I got to this point where I just felt like I was putting my head down and just trying to make it work day after day, and not really having any enjoyment in life. And then I had a couple of really consequential conversations that came at critical times in my life. And it really made me start questioning if this was what I really wanted for my life. Or if I was just trying to please other people all the time, that people pleaser mentality, was really strong in my upbringing, and it was something that I wrestled with for a really, really long time. So in a lot of ways, for me, the second verse was my marriage. I was out of my parents house, I was trying to have my own life. But I was still having those echoes of the first verse where other people decided what was best for me. And so for me, the third verse didn't start until after I decided to get divorced after 22 years of marriage, it was a really, really difficult time for me. And that's actually what brings us to how to be alone. So the third verse is what started my midlife. And the revolution came when I decided to change one small thing. And I'll tell you the story of that here in just a second. But I want to welcome you to the opportunity to change revolutionary things in your life by just starting with one small thing. The one small thing I changed that changed at all, was when I finally decided for the first time in my life to choose myself, rather than trying to continue to be a people pleaser. It was February 14 of 2017. And my former spouse and I were well into our first year of marriage counseling. And actually, it wasn't our first year it was our third round of marriage counseling, but it seemed like it was a year long. It was almost that long. And we were sitting in the marriage counselors office on this tiny little sofa. And I was being asked to make a decision. See the day before I had gotten into an argument with my former spouse, and I started to recognize some of these same unhealthy patterns coming up in our relationship that we had supposedly worked through many times before. And when I recognized that it was a repetition of a pattern that I didn't want to continue to repeat. I finally told him that I just was done, and I couldn't do it anymore. And the next day was Valentine's Day, February 14, it was a Monday and we had an appointment with our marriage therapist. And he offered that maybe we should just go ahead and go and try to figure things out. out. And so I agreed. And when we were sitting there in the office, and I was talking about all of the unhealthy patterns that I felt like we were repeating, and the fact that I didn't feel like we were making any progress, even after a whole year of counseling on our third marriage counselor, and I just said that I was done, I finally chose myself over everybody else's expectations and what might make other people feel better. And I remember very specifically that my former spouse asked me, Do you think there's any chance that we could reconcile? And I really thought about that for a long moment? Because the pleaser in me and the empath and me really wanted to say, yes, yes, if you do this, this and this, we can reconcile. But in those couple of seconds, that seems like eternity, I started to think about all of the times when I had given that chance before and said, Yes, you can change and I'll wait. And you can make things right. And for a few days or a few weeks, things would be better. But then we would end up going back to the same unhealthy cycles again. And so it was really that moment where I decided to make a choice that was what was going to be best for me, and not what was going to be best for him or not what was going to be easiest. And I said no, there's no chance that we can reconcile.

And that was a really pivotal moment in my life. It was a time when I made what seemed to me at this, at the time seem to be a small change. But what was really happening is that I was creating a revolution in my life. So let's rewind just a little bit. For the majority of my life, I was never really alone for very long. I was the second of four children. And from the time that my baby sister was born, we shared a room all the way up until I was almost a senior in high school. And then once I graduated from high school, I went to college, my first semester, I had a roommate. After that semester, I moved in with my cousins in Austin. I lived with them for a few months, and then I moved back in with my parents. And then after a little while I got married. And so I never really spent a significant amount of time alone, I didn't live alone. And I was only away from my family for a maximum of a week or two weeks at a time at the very most. And so I almost always had somebody around me, I almost always had somebody to do things with whether it was a friend or a boyfriend or my sister. And I never really learned how to be alone, and how to spend time with myself with nobody else. Until that time that I got divorced. And my former spouse and I did kind of a crazy thing. When we got divorced, I didn't want the children to be uprooted from their house and moved from their neighborhood with their friends and their school that they loved. And so we decided to let the kids stay in the house. And he and I rented an apartment separate from the house. And we would switch off every other week. And the only difference for the children was that they only had one parent home at a time. So one of us would go to the apartment, and the other would stay in the house with the kids. And it was just very minimally furnished. We didn't keep any personal items in there. So on Sundays, we would switch. And when we showed up at the apartment, it was sort of like a hotel. And we would just bring our suitcase we'd hang our clothes in the closet, we'd wash the sheets and make the bed and, and all of that. And that was kind of the first time that I really spent time alone. After being a mother for 22 years, you know, getting married and having children. And that was my whole life. That was all I did all day every day was take care of my children. And of course, I had jobs and I worked in everything. But there was almost never a time when I didn't when I wasn't responsible for somebody else. And so when I went to the apartment that first Sunday night, and I unpacked my suitcase, and I made the bed and I just sat on the couch and I thought what do I do with this time? What do I do with my life now, when there's nobody else demanding my attention? And there's nobody else in the apartment. And I'm just here by myself. So that was the first time where I really started to contemplate what it was like to be alone. And I didn't really like being alone. I didn't like the thoughts in my head. I did not want to sit and listen to myself ruminate about all the things that were difficult in my life. And I had a really hard time that first week figuring out what to do with myself. When there was nobody demanding anything of me He and I had to come up with a list of things that I was going to do. I thought about hobbies that I could have, I didn't really want to sit there and binge watch TV shows, I didn't really want to go out and spend time in public alone. I just was really having a hard time figuring out what my purpose was going to be during that week. And I finally came to the determination that this was my opportunity to work on myself, it was an opportunity for me to look at some things in my life that I wanted to change. And I was already in therapy. But I figured, you know, maybe I can journal. And maybe I can do some art therapy. And maybe I can pursue some hobbies that I hadn't done before. It was really the first time I had to take a good hard look at what I wanted for myself, for my own life. And I realized that in order to be the best kind of mother that I want it to be to my children, I needed to spend time becoming a healthier human being, so that I could love myself enough to love my children better.

So over those first few months that I was in the apartment, I played with different hobbies, and I read different books, and I tried to come up with some ideas of how to spend my time. And in the meantime, it was May, and it was time for my wedding anniversary. And it was the first time in 22 years that I was going to be spending that evening alone by myself. I didn't know what to do. My friends were busy, I didn't really have anybody that I could hang out with that night. And I didn't want to just sit alone in the apartment. So I decided to continue the tradition of going out to a nice dinner on my anniversary. So I got dressed up, I did my hair and makeup. I made a reservation at my favorite steak restaurant. And I went to the restaurant by myself. And I sat at the table, I ordered a nice glass of champagne. I ordered a beautiful dinner. And I just sat and people watched and just enjoyed the fact that I was there by myself. And it became kind of a tradition for me. In fact, after that first year, I started to call it my anniversary, I would say I'm going out to celebrate my anniversary. And I did that every year for the first five years that I was divorced. And it was how I learned to date myself, how I learned to go out alone in public places and just enjoy my own company. And people watch and savor really good food and try new things and go to museums and not have to worry that I had to rush myself through the exhibits, because somebody else wasn't as interested as I was. In fact, I had an opportunity just a little while later to take some students to New York City on a trip and I was allowed to arrive in the city the day before so I could get ready for the students to be there. And then I had several days of sightseeing and touring and rehearsing and concerts and things like that. So that entire first day before the students got there, I decided that I was going to go to all the museums that I wanted to. And I started out with the Met my favorite. And I walked up those stairs and I went inside the building and I spent four glorious hours just staring at paintings and sculptures and furniture and costumes and just taking in the beautiful luxurious sights and colors of that incredible place. It took as many pictures as I wanted to I didn't worry about how long I was spending on one exhibit or another. I didn't worry about trying to rush through the entire museum and I just spent time in the rooms that were really meaningful to me. And when I was finished there, I went to the Guggenheim. And I spent another two hours at the Guggenheim. And when I was finished there, I went to the Museum of Modern Art. And I spent another two hours in the Museum of Modern Art. And when I was finished there, even though it was a little bit circuitous route around New York City, I went to Central Park. And I walked in to the southeast corner of Central Park, where they have this beautiful little duck pond and a stone bridge. And I sat on a bench in front of the duck pond and it was wintertime. And the trees were kind of frozen, there was ice all over the branches. And I just closed my eyes and I listened to the wind and I listened to the crackling of the ice on those branches. And I just breathed that cold air. And I marveled at the fact that I could just sit there alone and enjoy all of those sounds and sights and sensations without feeling the need to reach out for a connection from anybody else because by that time, I had gotten to the point where I really loved and enjoyed awaited my own company, I was able to sit with my own thoughts because they weren't harmful thoughts anymore. I had learned to love all of the parts of myself. And I wasn't perfect at this point. And I certainly wasn't done with therapy at this point. But I thought that it was amazing that I had come that far, in just short of a year, to be able to sit alone with myself in a small corner of Central Park, and just enjoy the world around me without worrying about what other people thought about a person sitting alone on a park bench. And if they thought I was pathetic, or sad, or by myself, I really didn't care. And that little corner of Central Park kind of became my happy place. And when I went to therapy, from then on, whenever we were finished, you know, tearing everything up, and I had to sort of call myself back down, that little corner of Central Park became my calm place. And it became the place that I envisioned my head when I went to sleep at night, in that little place between awake and asleep, when it's just you alone with your thoughts, and even if there's a person next to you, and even if you've watched a TV show, and even if you've scrolled on your phone until you're exhausted, there's still a moment of time, no matter how big or small, where you have only yourself and your own thoughts to contend with before you go to sleep. And I think for a lot of us, that can be a really scary thing. And I think for a lot of us, that's why so many of us numb by drinking or using drugs or scrolling on Instagram or watching a show until we fall asleep. Because then we spare ourselves from that gap in our consciousness, where there's no sound, and there's no distraction. And there's no numbing, it's just us and our own thoughts. It's so important for us as human beings to be able to get quiet, and sit and listen to ourselves, and to allow ourselves to feel whatever comes up. Our feelings can be really scary sometimes, especially when we've been through traumatic events. Or if we've had a fight with someone we love, or if there's something we said that we regret. No matter what our regrets are, at the end of the day, we have to face them for ourselves. Because we can't be the best version of ourselves until we have resolved the feelings that we have of inadequacy or of failure. And it's that time between awake and asleep, when we have the quiet space to think those thoughts and to either be very positive with ourselves and accepting of everything that comes up or to be very negative and dismissing that negative self talk can be so damaging.

And that's why it's really, really important to get to the place where we understand and accept all of the different parts of ourselves, the good parts and the bad parts, the light parts and the dark parts. It's important to have a big table where all the parts of ourselves can sit together and realize that they each play a role, that they're each important that they're each valuable and accepted. So even when I have an angry, negative reaction to something, someone says, I realized that that's the warrior part of me coming up to defend me from potential harm, or abandonment or rejection. And so I recognize the warrior and I say thank you for showing up for me today. And thank you for trying to protect me. And now I need you to sit back down at the table and take your place. And let me go back and connect with that person that I got angry with. There's a lot more to say about that. It can be very complicated to think about. And if this is bringing up some difficult feelings for you. I think it's really important to take a moment to stop and just write some things down. Just stop and journal journal about what's coming up for you. And journal about what potentially you might want to meditate on things you might want to take to your therapist. If you have a thought that causes you to pause and reflect. It's often you're you're telling yourself that there's something important there to you. And I think we do ourselves a really big disservice when we don't allow that time and space to meditate and think about the things that are coming up so that we can heal them. I often find that when negative emotions or difficult emotions come up that are painful for me, the sooner that I acknowledged that difficult emotion and recognize it for what it is, and allow myself to feel it, the sooner that it passes. For example, the emotion that comes up for me most often nowadays is grief, I have grief for a time that I've lost, I have grief for the things that I didn't know when I was younger, for the relationships that I lost, because I didn't know. And when that grief comes up for me, the best thing in the world that I can do is say, Oh, it's my old friend grief, coming back to visit me again, thank you grief for showing up to remind me what's important to me, to remind me of the things that I've lost that I miss in my life. And to remind me that there are ways that I can do better. And there are ways that I can move through this grief and honor the feelings, and honor the people and the things in my life that I've lost.

And then allow it to pass and move on. And when I do that, I know that early on in my healing, sometimes it would take an hour or more for those difficult feelings to pass. But now that I've been through a lot of healing and a lot of work, it's really only a few minutes before those feelings dissipate and fade away. And I'm able to release them and just let them go. So I want to talk for just a second about this societal slash religious expectations of us to have a partner in our lives, I think many of us especially if you were raised in a religious environment, or a very strong family environment, the expectation is that you find a primary partner that you get married, that you raise children, and even if children are not in the picture, and even if your primary partnership is not traditional, or doesn't look the way that your parents primary partnership did, I think there's still an expectation there that all of us are going to find someone and be with someone and that being alone is a bad thing or a negative thing. And I think the reason why I wanted to start this episode, or start the past podcast with an episode about being alone, is because I think that idea is a little bit flawed. Because it sort of leaves us with this expectation that we need somebody else in order to be whole, when the real truth of the matter is that we are whole, exactly how we are. And if we get to the point where we love and accept all of the parts of ourselves, then we don't actually need connection with another human being in order to feel whole and joyful and happy. Now, that's not to say that we don't need human beings at all, because there definitely is a component of human connection that is really important and very strong. And we do need each other as human beings, we can't just be solitary. We could be but it wouldn't be the healthiest thing we need to learn to connect and interact with other human beings. It's hardwired into our biology to have connection. But I think the problem comes when we think that we need something like that in order to be whole, or in order to be happy. The most healthy way that we can connect is to have a really excellent relationship with ourselves, to be at peace with ourselves, and then to reach out for connection in other spaces. We can't really be a healthy, good effective partner, if our relationship with ourself is flawed. And it's something that's a practice that we have to work on all the time. I'm certainly not suggesting that I'm not flawed. Even though I have a great relationship with myself. There's still many times when I have negative self talk, or when I let myself down, I don't keep promises to myself. And I have to learn to repair that with myself. But I'm at a point now where I don't need to go out and chase relationships or friendships of any kind. I put out positive energy into the world. And I think that other positive people are attracted to that energy. I find great people to spend time with I have an excellent, wonderful partner. And we've had this conversation before it is kind of a hard thing for somebody to say, well, I don't need you in my life. But I choose you. And when I got to the point where I had removed everything from my life that I felt was harmful or oppressive. I started gradually adding things back into my life that felt whole and healing. And my relationship with my partner was one of those things. I really felt that we contributed well to each other. And not that we get along perfectly all the time. And we definitely disagree on a lot of things. But our ability to repair after conflict and our ability to hear each other without judgment and without shame is a really important component of that. But I couldn't get To the point where I could hear someone else's opinions, and desires and needs without judgment or shame, until I stopped judging and shaming myself. And that was a long journey to get there. But now I'm at the point where I don't need a partner. But I choose to have that partner in my life because of what we add to each other's life. And because of the ways that we show up for each other, and because it's a meaningful connection that adds value to both of our lines. One of the other really important things that I want to talk about with regard to being alone is that stepping away from circumstances, from people from relationships from situations, that stepping away is probably one of the most important key components about deciding what is meaningful in your life and what is no longer serving you. All of my most important revolutions started with taking a step away. It wasn't until I created some boundaries around my family of origin, that I realized how unhealthy those dynamics were. It wasn't until I had a significant time away from my spouse that I realized some of the unhealthy patterns that we were getting into. It wasn't until I took a break from my teaching career that I realized how toxic that environment was for me and how I didn't feel like I was being honored and respected in that relationship.

So just taking time to step away from a situation I think is really important. If there's something that's telling you, I'm not sure if this is happy, I'm not sure if this is right. For me, I'm not sure if this is healthy, taking some time away is really important. And it doesn't have to be super drastic, it doesn't have to be weeks or months, it can even just be an hour of spending some time alone in solitude. And that's why I brought this part up in the alone episode. Because stepping away means being alone. It means looking at a situation from the outside and reviewing it and seeing if it really is healthy if it's still serving us. Or if it's something that is causing a drain on our resources, our time and attention. And it was really hard for me for a long time to prioritize myself and my needs. But one of the best ways to get me to make good decisions about myself was for me to think about what I would do if it was one of my children in the same situation. Now, even if you don't have kids, if you have somebody else that you really care about a friend or a family member, it's really important to ask yourself, you know, if my friend were in the same situation, what would I What advice would I give them? What would I tell them to do? What would I want for them? What healing and happiness would I sort of push them towards or nudge them towards if I had the opportunity. And so for me, when I was thinking about my relationship with my parents specifically, and I decided to take some time away from speaking to them. I started to think, you know, I was felt really guilty about that. And there were a lot of family members who told me that I needed to go back and be with my parents, because they're, they're your parents, they're your only parents, you only have one set of parents. And I started to feel really guilty about it. And I thought to myself, like what would I do if one of my own children decided that they wanted some boundaries around talking to me? What if one of my own children told me, You know what, Mom, I love you. But right now I need some space from our relationship. And in fact, that did happen to me at one point in my life. And what I decided and thought to myself was that if my child wanted space for me, because it was healthier for them, of course, that's what I would want for them. And it sort of empowered me to stick to my boundaries, and to continue to take that time to heal from my relationship with my parents, without feeling guilty or shameful about it, because it's what absolutely what I would advise my children to do in the same situation. So if it's hard for you to show up for yourself, for you to make decisions that are what's best for you or to advocate for yourself. Sometimes it helps to put yourself in the position of somebody else, what would I tell somebody else? If they were asking me for these kinds of boundaries, or if they needed something from me. The last little thing I want to talk about before we wrap up and end this first episode is just that. I want you to believe that you have everything within yourself that you need right now. To be a healed, whole complete human being, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. One of the things that I learned in my expensive, expensive and extensive therapy time is that my instincts were really good for what I needed. And if I wasn't sure about Something I had a really great therapist who had asked me a question he would say, What do you think you need right now? And I would say, I don't know, I just feel tired, I'm confused. And he would say, Stop. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And when I asked you this question, I want you to just say the first thing that comes to your mind. What do you need right now, in order to heal? And I would say, oh, all I want is a really good steak dinner and just to go to bed. And you would say, yeah, that's it. That's what you need. And even if it's not food, there's lots of other ways to practice self care than shopping and food and things like that. And we'll talk about that in another episode, for sure, for sure. But what I want people to take away is that if we're able to quiet all of the static and noise and negative thoughts that tend to kind of circle around us when we're not in a good space, and we're not feeling our best.

If we can just close our eyes and take a deep breath and ask ourselves that question, what do I need? Chances are that most of the time, the very first thing that pops into your head is going to be exactly the right answer for you. And the more that we practice, trusting our own instincts, the better and the faster our healing process is going to go. And the healthier that we're going to be. I think we're taught so much not to trust ourselves. Because we're constantly being marketed to we're constantly being told, told what's wrong with us, we're constantly being told that we're not good enough or smart enough or rich enough, or pretty enough. And so we learn to disconnect from ourselves, we learn to stop trusting our own instincts, when really, the most important voice that we need to listen to is our own. And I understand how it feels when our voice is sort of clouded by other people's expectations. And I know a lot of times, the voice in my head was more like the abusers that I healed from rather than my own voice. But it's a practice and the more that we practice listening to our own voice and following our own instincts, and keeping little promises to ourselves, the faster we're going to heal and the better off we're going to be. What do I mean by keeping promises to yourself? That looks like when I tell myself that it's important for me to prioritize sleep, that I actually take action to do that, when I tell myself that I really want to keep a gratitude journal, that I take action to make time and space to do that, when I promised myself that I'm going to leave work a little bit early, so I don't feel so stressed getting home, that I make myself that promise rather than going back to fulfill other people's expectations. So the practice of learning to trust ourselves and the practice of keeping promises to ourselves, are some of the best ways that we can heal our relationship with ourselves and learn better how to be along. What I want to leave you with tonight finally is one of my very favorite songs and poems. In a former life, I was an opera singer. I got my bachelor's degree in music and marketing from the University of Texas at San Antonio. And then I went on to get my master's degree in vocal performance from Texas State University. And while I was studying for my masters recital, I got introduced to a beautiful collection of songs by Samuel Barber, who is an American composer. You might remember his Symphony from some really famous movies. The Adagio for Strings is one of his main most famous compositions, and it was featured in the movie Full Metal Jacket. He wrote a collection of songs that was based on some poetry by a revolutionary Irish poet, whose name was Sean O'Fallon, and I'm going to share some things about him with you as well. But first, I want to talk about this song that had a really big impact on me. It was a collection of songs called hermit songs. And one of the main songs in that collection is called the desire for hermitage. And the song really touched me deeply and I want to play a little clip of it for you here right now.

So, the incredible vocalists that you heard on that song was a woman named Leontyne Price who was also one of my heroes. And a revolutionary woman. And I'll tell you a little more about her in just a second. But first, I want to read to you the words of the poem and talk a little bit about why it was so touching to me, ah, to be all alone, in a little cell, with nobody near me. Beloved, that pilgrimage before the last pilgrimage to death, singing the passing hours to cloudy heaven, feeding upon dry bread and water from the cold spring, that will be an end to evil. When I'm alone, in a lovely little corner among tombs far from the houses of the great ah, to be all alone, in a little cell. Alone, I came into the world alone, I shall go from it. Now, before you start to think that this is just depressing and sad, what resonated with me about that is the thought that the contemplation that did I come into the world alone, at the very least, my mother was there. But as I became a mother, myself, and I learned about the personalities of children, and the fact that I just really believe that they are born with the personalities that they have, they are who they are, from the moment they enter this world. And when you think about it, from that perspective, you know, I came into the world, and my mother didn't really know me yet. So I was alone in that regard. She didn't know what my personality was like at that point. And it was just me. And of course, I depended on her for my survival. And I counted on her to give me sort of a worldview and a way to look at things. But I was alone in the fact that I was the only one who really knew who I was. And I feel that way about myself now, too, even though there are plenty of people that I'm very close to, and I share a lot of things with, and certainly my partner knows almost everything there is to know about me, I'm the only one who truly knows my thoughts, and who truly understands my motivations, and who knows my own heart. And so in that regard, I'm still alone. And it's okay. Because I love who I am. I've loved coming to learn and understand more about myself. And when I think about the idea that we're going to leave this life alone to, I know it can be melancholy, to think about death, but it's an inevitability. It's one of our existential fears, it's, it's one of the worst things that we can think of right is the end of our lives. But when I think about it, from the perspective of going from this world alone, just like I came from it, or I came to it, realizing that I am, who I am. And I'm the same person, leaving this world as I was coming to it, except that I have this wealth of experiences. And this richness of knowing myself even better now than I did then. And knowing that I made contributions to the world that were unique to just me, that I have a circle of influence that is unique, and is completely different than anybody else's. And the gifts that I have, and the insights that I have, can influence people in ways that nobody else can do that out there in the world. And so I sort of like the idea that I'm going to leave the world alone, because what I gave to the world was singular, and can't be duplicated by anybody else. Because I'm a singular individual.

I hope that if there's anything else that you can take away from this episode today, that you will think about one small thing that you can change, whether it's your perspective on life, whether it's your idea about being alone, whether it's about healing your relationship with yourself, whether it's about understanding that you came to this world as a singular human being with unique gifts and talents, and that your experiences in the world are only going to make you a richer and better person, even if they're difficult experiences. I hope that you take away one small thing, and you don't even have to change anything today. If you just change the way that you think about things and that one small change can create ripples that are going to cause a revolution. Now, at the end of the episode, I want to give a shout out to some revolutionary people and the first one is Leontyne Price. She was a revolutionary. She did in her time what no other woman was able to to do I just want to read some brief comments from an article on Wikipedia about her. The door to opera opened through the young medium of television, and the NBC Opera Theater with music director Peter Herman odler in January of 1955 Leontine pricing the title role in Puccini's Tosca. It was the first appearance by an African American in a leading role in televise opera. Price went on to star in three other NBC opera broadcasts as Pamina and Mozart's The Magic Flute in 1956. And in the dialogue of the Carmelites the following years and is Dona Ana in Mozart's Don Giovanni in 1960. Tosca was the performance of a lifetime for her and her appearance had not been widely advertised by NBC, which had a policy of interrogation without identification, meaning they weren't going to talk about the fact that she was a black performer. The Jackson, Mississippi NBC affiliate carried the broadcast signal to her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi. However, jet magazine noted that her appearance would tenor David paleri marked the first TV broadcast with a mixed racial couple, and her later NBC opera broadcasts were boycotted by several NBC affiliates, most of them in the South because of her race. Leontyne Price, who was born in Laurel, Mississippi, and went on to become an internationally renowned opera star and the first black woman to appear on the main stage at the Metropolitan Opera was revolutionary for her time, her talent continues to live on, and it inspired me as a young singer, and I hope that her image continues to inspire today. The second revolutionary that I want to honor in today's episode is Shaun of Phelan. He was a controversial figure in his own lifetime and two of his books were banned for indecency in Ireland. Again, this is from the Wikipedia article about him. It says his debut collection of short stories and his second novel Bert alone, which was written in 1936. were banned for indecency in Ireland. His legacy has proved divisive, if some consider him a social liberal cosmopolitan, who challenged prospective definitions of Irish culture. Others see him as a chauvinistic snob who paradoxically restricted the development of Irish writings. The reason I mentioned Sean O'Fallon tonight is because he is the composer of the original poem, the desire for hermitage. I love revolutionaries, who are controversial, who write and compose and create art that is all about what they want to put out into the world, and not about what the cultural norms dictate the fact that his books were banned for indecency in 1936 To me, makes him a revolutionary. I want to go back to the beginning of the episode, to where we started with the contemplation of how to be alone. And the quote from Carl Jung, the highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with oneself. You must be alone, to find out what supports you when you find that you cannot support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible Foundation, my fellow revolutionaries I hope that you found one small thing that you can change today. That's going to help you build that indestructible foundation. That's going to make a change in your life. That changes everything.