A NEW KIND OF LONELINESS.

I enjoy watching HGTV for its "Househunters" program. Young (usually) couples looking for a new place to live because they have outgrown their present abode. I am amused by the chouices they make, especially by the criteria that seem so superficial. Stuff like hating a "popcorn" ceiling or a "dated" kitchen. Stainless steel and granite are manadatory, de rigeur, don't be caught dead with anything,less! I cook on a regular old white stove and store food in a "dated" white refrigerator. I eat well but apparently that's not enough.

I don't want to carp at other people's taste but I am concerned about one recurring demand: privacy.

Watching tonight I was just a littl bit sad because a couple looking in an Atlanta suburb loved the house but every time they walked by a window they complained that they could see their neighbours.

The larger issue is that as life becomes more and more complicated, more and more people are taking refuge within themselves, they are, and the word, popular a few years ago was "cocooning."

No one wants to have eavesdropping neighbours but this is much more than that. As we seem to disappear into a kind of human seclusion, it saddens me. As we rush from eye contact I am bothered. As we hide behind devices that fill our ears with music while we ride in community with hundreds of people on public transit, I worry that we are losing the ability to be the social creatures we have to be.

I think that part of survival is to recognize and to embrace the realities aound us; to live with the world instead of somewhere outside it; to open ourselves, to let our pores be exposed, to see others and to be seen.

I don't mean we should be literally in each others' pockets. I only think that when you are shy about lookiing out a window and seeing neighbours, you are missing some of what makes the world go round.

We are socisl creatures. I worry that fear and insecurity is changing it all.