Out of Solitude

These mornings alone in my little cubicle are precious moments—quality time.  I don’t think it makes me antisocial, for I feel closer to others at this time than I often do when in their company.  I don’t think it causes me to reject the rest of the world.  In fact, in these moments, there is not a place in the world where I am not.  In this time alone I do not experience life epiphanies or discover some form of truth or reality no other brain has ever managed to encounter.  “In solitude,” wrote Virginia Woolf, “we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.”

Four years ago, I wrote in my journal:  “I am grateful that in this season of my life I am able to spend some time in solitude….There are so many things I want to do still, so many places I want to go, so many questions yet to answer, so many problems yet to solve, so many dreams yet to dream.  I will not give in to melancholy or despair in this season of my life.  I think about the past…thinking how I might have done things differently, knowing in some cases I should have.  But I also think of the here and now—and the tomorrows yet to come.  To ‘ponder’ the journey—the past, the yesterdays, to live as fully as I can today, and to dream of the tomorrows to come, is to push away the mist of age and live.”  

Erich Fromm, however, suggested that in solitude something even more exciting than  thoughts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow may happen.  He wrote: “Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world.  Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before.  Let your soul take you where you long to be….Close your eyes.  Let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.”

Carl Jung had it right when he wrote, “Your visions will become clear only when you look into your own heart.  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”  What more could one ask for in this season of life than to “live as you’ve never lived before.”  It is a gift out of solitude.

Another iris blooms....