Going Solo, Part III: Ethnography

On my big spring road trip to the Pacific Northwest I ended up with a day and a half to myself in the Seattle area. It wasn't exactly planned, but it also wasn't unwelcome. In fact, I really kind of liked having some time to myself. I explored without worrying about getting lost, played with my new camera without worrying about making fellow travelers impatient, and took my time without worrying about interfering with anyone else's plans or expectations.

My alone time started with a three hour drive out of central Washington in the morning, and I came out of the mountains and down into civilization around lunchtime. I chose a random freeway exit in Issaquah and thought I'd track down the local Wendy's or Arby's, but as I drove I realized that I didn't feel like fast food. searching for something more palatable, I came across a little restaurant called O'Ginger Bistro at the corner of a tree-lined shopping center. I had no idea what kind of food O'Ginger Bistro served, but it seemed a lot more interesting than Wendy's, both culinarily and local-culturally. I circled a couple times contemplating my choice before I finally just parked my car, grabbed my Kindle so that I could comfortably hide from my single-diner-ness, and bravely walked through the doors to eat at a sit-down restaurant all by myself for the first time in almost 8 years.

O'Ginger Bistro turned out to be a little Thai restaurant (yum!), sparsely populated with a lunch crowd but not empty. The service was quick. Before I even had time to turn on my Kindle, the waitress had taken my drink order and brought me soup. I chose a curry dish from the menu, and then I did the really brave thing. I pushed my Kindle aside, and I just ate my lunch.

It turns out that my 31-year-old self is a lot different from my 23-year-old self back at that Bavarian restaurant in central California. To my younger self's credit, I had grown up a lot by 23. I had moved across the country and taken a real job, and was returning to Utah as a financially independent graduate student, and I'd gained some confidence and poise and experience and fashion sense and personal direction that I hadn't had when I left home five years earlier. But I still wasn't really comfortable in my own skin. I couldn't imagine that I could sit in a restaurant all by myself and be perceived only as an independent, solitary young traveler. Nor could I trust my perception of myself over the perception I imagined other people might have of me.

I felt that eight year difference as I pushed aside my Kindle at the O'Ginger Bistro and felt no need to hide behind a book.

The experience wasn't just about my own personal growth, though. I think a lot about distraction these days. I think about it as I fill my iPod with podcasts and music to crowd out the empty space when I drive. I think about it when I talk to other friends about the amount of time we spend (and don't always want to spend) plugged into our computers. I thought about it a lot as I pondered why I was about to drag eleven 11-17-year old girls up into the mountains for Girls Camp. I feel like many people, if not most, and certainly myself included, have a desire to be perpetually mentally engaged, and that's not always a bad thing. But not only do we neglect time for reflection, we often overlook the fact that being engaged can be a much simpler and quieter experience than we think.

That's what I felt while I was eating lunch, and why this experience made such an impression on me. I didn't have to be talking to other people or reading a book. I enjoyed my food, I listened to other diners around me, and I was perfectly engaged and happy.

I say that I like people-watching (who doesn't?), but I don't know if I had ever actively people-watched the way I did at the restaurant. I spent much of my lunch trying to guess what the couple at the table in my line of vision were talking about through the snippets of conversation that drifted toward me, their tone of voice, and their gestures. They were clearly a professional (as opposed to romantic) couple, but the dynamic between the man and the woman was fascinating to watch. The man was doing all the talking, and at one point moved over to sit on the same side of the table as the woman. The woman, for her part, said very little other than to nod or agree or encourage him to continue. It seemed to me that they were colleagues, but I couldn't figure out what sort of colleagues, and I wondered if either of them was fully aware of how one-sided the conversation was.

There was also the man at the table behind me, another solo diner, who seemed abundantly and genuinely pleased with everything about his lunchtime dining experience.

"What kind of tea is this?" he asked the waitress at one point.

"It's jasmine tea," she replied.

"Jasmine!" he said, with a happy sigh that implied that he thought her answer strange and surprising and wonderful. "It's really quite good!"

Through all of this I didn't feel like I was eavesdropping, just observing. At some point, much later, it occurred to me that what I was doing was exactly what I hadn't wanted done to me while eating alone. I hadn't wanted people to observe me and fill in my backstory and personality with things that just weren't true. And yet sitting on the other side of it made me feel a bit better about having it done to me, and even a little curious. What would a people-watcher have made of me?

As part of one of our pre-camp Young Women activities, I had the girls close their eyes, stop talking, and just listen for two minutes. After they opened their eyes I asked them what they had heard, and it was amazing how many sounds we were able to identify within those two minutes of silence in someone's backyard. It was like discovering a whole world that normally lies just beneath our consciousness. I analogized the experience, of course, using it to talk about the purpose of camp and removing ourselves from civilization to better hear and experience life and friendships and the voice of the Lord without distractions. But I think it's worthwhile to sometimes do the same thing, in some way, in our day-to-day distraction-filled lives, if only to see that there is far more to the world than we're sometimes aware.

[Also, I've finally almost caught up on my book blog, with three new reviews: a recommend from my brother Sean, a recommend from my dad, and a book club reject that I wanted to read more than the book that was actually chosen by the group. These reviews are not heavily edited, so I apologize for any inconsistencies, incoherencies, or typos.]