As John Donne wrote and Bon Jovi sang, "No man is an island."
But looking down the streets of Columbia at all the people plugged into their iPods, one would call such conventional wisdom in to question. I am not opposed to the technology itself. As usual, what concerns me is the way in which we depend upon it.
We cross the line when the iPod becomes more than just a music player - when it becomes, in effect, an escape pod.
I see it every day: The earbuds go in, and a wall goes up. It has become all too easy to wrap yourself up in a musical microcosm and tune out the world at large. Friends walk by and offer friendly greetings that fall on voluntarily deaf ears.
This can't be healthy. For one thing, there are safety concerns. This city has enough speeding motorists, aggressive bicyclists and neurotic dog-walkers that impairing one of the five senses is a virtual death wish. Not to mention the havoc that earbuds at max volume can wreak on eardrums.
The real issue, though, is our latent desire for isolation. All people want to be left alone at certain times, but there are some among us who would like to go one step further and build our own islands. An MP3 player can afford just such a luxury by giving users the opportunity to create a personal listening experience, shared with no one and tailored to one's every whim and inclination.
Keep those headphones on during meals - don't laugh; I've seen it - and during all public appearances except classes, and you can cloister yourself like a monk in a cave.
The book "Into the Wild" retells the journey of Chris McCandless, who graduated from college in the early '90s and then immediately hit the road, essentially abandoning society for months before dying alone in the Alaskan wilderness. If McCandless were alive, I do not doubt that he would love his iPod.
He was a young man who had witnessed humanity at its bleakest and most selfish, and he decided to give up on people altogether. I can't count the number of times I've felt that same call of the wild, the call of indignant resignation. But I thank God that I have yet to answer it.
I usually have my headphones on when I go running, and there have been days when I've turned the music up as loud as it will go just to erase my surroundings. But I find that some of the runs I truly enjoy are the ones when my ears are unencumbered. I hear my friends saying hello as they walk by, the birds cheering me on from the trees and the cars sputtering down the city streets.
There's a wide, noisy world out there. Let's start listening again.