Our Isolation
Part One - Moods of Moominvalley: Who Will Comfort Toffle?
This is part one of who knows how many in a series in which I explore some of my favorite imagined places, in this case, Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley.
There are many ways to access truths. Take, for example, the recent cover article in The Atlantic, “The Anti-Social Century,” by Derek Thompson. A well researched and laid out argument on the ways in which we are more isolated than ever and if we don’t exercise our analog social community-oriented muscles, they will atrophy. It’s a powerful article and I’m sure helped many, many people think about the ways in which we are contributing to our own isolation, collective and personal.
We enter the article in restaurant in North Carolina where, out of necessity, the bar seating has been repurposed to organize takeout bags for customers who have ordered online. The restaurant is mostly empty. Before the pandemic, the bar was always full. The author goes on to argue that our phones and social media (and other technologies over starting with the television) merely give us the illusion that we are connected and that by spending, say, a night alone scrolling, even interacting online, we are still left isolated and feeling lonely. And, as we individually and repeatedly continue to choose this convenient and entertaining isolation over communing with one another, our psychologies, societies, and relationships to reality are changing.
Honestly, I had a hard time getting through the article. Not because it wasn’t well written or compelling, but because I’m the father of a nineteen month old and I have to be cautious and thoughtful with how I spend the precious attention and energy I have throughout the day. I am not everyone. My wife devours hundreds (thousands?) of articles like it every year. She’s the best reader I know, novels, essays, articles. I’ve always struggled to maintain enough attention to get through most articles of length. (Even before smartphones). As one of my prolific writing teachers once said, “I don’t read the New Yorker because to keep up, one would have to only read the New Yorker.” He added, “And that’s okay.”
I, on the other hand, devour audio books. I can think of few things more pleasant than closing my eyes and listening to a story. Podcasts generally don’t do it for me, nor do articles read aloud. I reserve my listening for novels.
So, while I must sacrifice being up to date with much of the latest in exceptional thinking and writing, one thing that is non-negotiable, is reading to my daughter before bed.
“Who lives inside this little house? It’s Toffle all alone.
Poor Toffle doesn’t notice quite how lonely he has grown”
We meet Toffle on a cold dark night. He is alone and scared and without a friend. He makes it through the long night, but because “He’d rather eat his hat for breakfast every day than spend another night like that…” he leaves his home to wander aimlessly in the wilderness. Through the forest he stumbles upon bands of fellow forest dwellers merry making and enjoying each other’s company, but he’s too afraid to say hello or ask for help.
“So WHO will comfort Toffle and explain the way things go?
They’d know that he was there if he would only say hello.”
He continues on without engaging with anyone, hiding in the shadows, making himself small and unnoticeable. Eventually, he makes his way to the beach where he finds a beautiful giant white shell. His hat full of collected pebbles, Toffle thinks, how wonderful it is to have this freedom. To do what he wishes, no one standing in his way.
“How wonderful thinks Toffle, ‘I can rest, or dance, or shout
Or fill my hat with pebbles.’ Even so he can’t work out
Why he is still not happy. There is no-one in his way,
No Hemulen or Groke nearby. He ought to feel okay.
So WHO will comfort Toffle and remind him that a shell
Is nicer when there’s somebody to show it to as well?
Eventually, he sees a bottle gently bobbing in the shallows and is overjoyed to discover that there is a letter inside. By the light of the moon, he reads that Miffle is alone and scared, stalked by the fearsome Groke, pleading for help from someone brave.
It is here that Toffle finds happiness and courage, when he is called to help another.
“The moonlight winks and Toffle thinks, ‘I’m happy. Yes indeed.
I know a Miffle needs me and a Miffle’s all I need!”
It is my belief that one of the greatest faults of modernity is that we have collectively forgotten or have chosen to ignore the fact that we are sensitive communal animals existing within landscapes. Toffle’s range of loneliness and call to courage is something universal. Many of us have felt all of these things at one point or another. We have all been Toffle and we have all been Miffle.
Now resourceful, Toffle empties out his suitcase and uses it as a boat to search for Miffle. He encounters whales and fellow creatures on holiday floating in rubber rings, rowing boats, and fishing as he makes his way toward the Groke’s black mountain hideaway where he suspects Miffle is trapped. No longer hiding, he rows and rows, and others begin to notice him and say, “hi.”
“‘I should reply,’ thinks Toffle. ‘Since she said hello to me,
But WHO will comfort Miffle if I dawdle endlessly?”
I think about early humans often. It might be because in high school, while taking classes at a local college, in a human ecology class I learned that from a caloric output to leisure time ratio, hunter gatherer societies are the most efficient. This has stuck with me for decades. I think about it all the time. And while our intelligence as humans has evolved over the two-hundred or so thousand years we have been anatomically us, our capacity to feel a wide range of emotions, have personalities, joke, make art, wonder, wander, look to the sky for answers, etc, etc, etc, has remained.
I like to imagine the range of personalities amongst hunter gatherers. Who was brave? Who was wise? Who was funny? Who was insufferable? Who was any and all of these things at any given time? And, who were the hunters, the gatherers, and the healers? Who were the artists? I’m sure there were many who did it all.
Similarly, I like to think of Michelangelo and Leonardo arguing in the streets of Florence. Did the Florentine onlookers and contemporaries have perspective on what they were witnessing, two of the greatest renaissance artists who would live in infamy for centuries, bickering like little boys? And, few things give me more hope to overcome my own moods and get on with it than this now famous quote from Charles Darwin, “I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.”
Who hasn’t felt like this?
The reason I write all this, the reason why I believe this moment in history while we reckon with our consumption and isolation, as we teeter on the precipice of both unthinkable catastrophe and an endless malaise, is so important, is twofold.
One, we absolutely have the ability to change both subtly and profoundly, and two, one of the fundamental truths that both the Atlantic article and timeless stories like Who Will Comfort Toffle tell us is: we need each other.
It’s not always easy, but it’s true.
“He dives inside the nearest hole as Groke begins to shriek
But makes himself climb out again. ‘How can I be so weak?’
He stamps an angry foot. At last, rage has replaced his fear.
Scared Miffles need brave Toffles when the frightful Grokes appear.”
What I’m also hoping to convey here is that not only must we look to each other, but we must also look to art— not only for truths, but also and maybe especially, for ways to communicate truths in new ways to more people and across great divides. While we absolutely must tell the factual stories of our time and see things and name things as they are, we must simultaneously invest in the timelessness of art. And to do so, we must make it, prioritize it, buy it, share it, gift it, encourage it, etc, etc, etc.
For example, there are countless books, millions of printed words, entire doctrines, schools of thought, degree programs, well funded research labs, podcasts, and videos aimed at helping us manage stress so we can live our lives. All of these have their place.
And then there are eight-word lines of poetry that to the right person are infinitely more impactful and memorable.
“So walk on air against your better judgement.”
— From The Gravel Walks by Seamus Heaney.
So, WHO will comfort Toffle?
At the end of the book, Toffle is so struck by Miffle that when he goes to tell her about what he has gone through, the long road to get to her, how lonely and scared he’s been, he cannot find the words, not even to write them in a letter. So, Tove Jansson asks us, the reader, to participate:
“So WHO will comfort Toffle now? Will someone lend a hand
And help him write to Miffle so that she can understand?”
(Find some writing paper. You won’t need a stamp. Just stick the letter on a rosebush where you’re sure Miffle will see it.)”
- Caleb
Read this while my 20-month-old was napping. Thanks for layering in so many beautiful and important ideas to consider as a human and parent of a little one 💕
“It’s not always easy, but it’s true.”