They use words to describe them.

Independent

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**Solitary **

**Self reliant **

**Isolated **

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Alone.

The people on the benches with their heads in books, newspapers, or in reality their phones. Black boxes that contain the sum of all human knowledge, and yet are used for further distancing of themselves from the surrounding world. In the phones, staring at LCD screens, glowing and flashing, grabbing our attention spans. Focus is dwindling, atrophied and withered like grapes left on a vine too long after harvest. Our ability to concentrate more and more is akin to the last strand of tissue on a tooth that has been exiled from the gums.

In the digital world it is totally and utterly impossible to be alone. Who is looking back at you looking through the screen? Who looks and deciphers what you do? Every keystroke, tap, search, watch, stream, message, secret, payment, everything you do and have done or will do is up for grabs. It is clear you can’t be alone here, yet this is where we sacrifice and pray to our new gods. Desperately trying to convince ourselves we haven’t changed and ruined what was our humanity. But even when in the world of 1s and 0s, where we are potentially most vulnerable and watched, we pretend we are alone. And who are we when alone?

So then we seek refuge away from screens, those of us brave enough to put them down. A desperate search for freedom from the parts we play and the masks we wear. Moments alone. No monitoring from behind the black screen, or others in the background and surrounding us. A moment to be alone. Ourselves and only ourselves. But yet, even on top of the highest and most secluded mountain, a plain vast and empty for miles around, or simply in a room, in a house with no living person around, another voice emerges.

One who knows is intimately, ultimately, totally. Who has seen all, knows all, perceives everything we do, think, want, hope, and aspire for. One who also knows everything we wish to forget, the mistakes, regrets, the demons hiding in unlockable closets, shames, fears, and all the worst parts of ourselves.

You are never truly alone, you are always with yourself. The incessant voice in your ear, who, for better or worse will never leave your side.

You can never be alone, for you are always with yourself. And they are never not watching you.