solitude
There’s something about listening to other people working alone in a studio in the same or similar field as you that helps you feel less ‘alone’ in the world. -
, #414
Solitude doesn't mean escaping the real world. It means withdrawing from something fictional. From something artificial. The small talk and the banter. The façade of acquaintances and plastic-ness. All the social norms masquerading as connection. All the platitudes that don't mean anything. It's choosing silence over noise and vacuity. It's living unmasked without the fatigue of having to wear thick skin.
But over time, with overuse, the withdrawal can lead to a kind of dependency. "Once you learn to love spending time alone, you risk developing a kind of addiction to it",
said a while ago. The comfort of it becomes stifling.Solitude turns to loneliness and back and forth again. Isolation becomes the sweetest of all oblivions. Exile starts to feel like where they say the heart is.
The trick, the solution, it isn't surprising.
It's belonging.
It's some kind of community.
That's not to say that it's not a delicate balancing. "The key to...community," Parker Palmer says, "involves holding a paradox - the paradox of having relationships in which we protect each other's aloneness." It's an anchor with a long cable. It's being tethered with enough room to drift and breathe, but not so much that you're lost at sea.
The greatest challenge, the struggle of every artist is the harmony of giving and receding. Sharing and retreating. But this is also "the highest task" of every bond of love and friendship, Rilke says, "to stand guard over" each other's solitude. To protect the space of being alone, while warding off loneliness. It's easier said than done. Of course it is. It's even harder to admit that you need it. But, its a good place to start trying.
P.S. ICAD - Day 195-198 - all these have been added to my Buy Me A Coffee Shop and are available for purchase.
Excellent point on "choosing silence over noise and vacuity. It's living unmasked without the fatigue of having to wear thick skin."
This is what I seek in my hikes in Nature each week. I would do it daily if I could just to be rid of the fatigue of years of living on the weekly 9-5 cubicle farm.
Duane, I resonate with what you're saying about having the courage and humility to acknowledge—even with those closest to us—their radical otherness and the space needed for personal growth. I hope it teaches us to appreciate our differences. To ask for guidance along the path, but not to cling or grasp. To be separate—but not isolated. Contemplative—but not lonely.