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Many consider marriage and children as essential to having a "full" life. A swan in a nearby pond helps writer Rawlins Gilliland realize one can have a fulfilled life alone and that, to a certain extent, time spent alone can be beneficial to healthy relationships.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
Many consider marriage and children as essential to having a "full" life. A swan in a nearby pond helps writer Rawlins Gilliland realize one can have a fulfilled life alone and that, to a certain extent, time spent alone can be beneficial to healthy relationships.
Broadcast History
"Swan Lake" aired 3/17/2010 on KERA 90.1 FM during Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
Transcript
There’s a wetland area nestled into the forest behind my house. Rainy swamp or sunshine, it’s a place I routinely go to be alone. Not to be confused with lonely.
Spending time alone is something many of us not only need, it’s something valuable we do. Pertinent to life at large; I wonder how anyone can become ‘whole’ with someone else when they’ve never been wholly alone with themselves without feeling lonely.
I thought about this yesterday as I watched the solitary swan that has inexplicably lived for years on an inland pond adjacent to the creek. Each visit, I’m touched; his life striking me as sad since he is never with his own. But how am I to know that he doesn’t think the same of me? He cannot be aware that gregarious human loners may actively seek the company of others while mandating important time and space alone.
We Homo sapiens idealize matrimonial bonding....
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:Some might consider a life lived alone as unfulfilled, but commentator Rawlins Gilliland isn't so sure.
OUTRO:Rawlins Gilliland is a writer from Dallas, TX.
