Sunday 7 June 2020

The Delicate Dance Between Solitude and Communion



The Delicate Dance Between Solitude and Communion:


Solitude, how I grave you and yet, how I do despise you.


There are times when I dream of being in a light-house, living there as its keeper, being all by myself, all alone, with no one to interrupt my thoughts and deeds. I think that in everyones’s mind and heart there exists an image of the ideal place, the one true home, actual or visionary. The lighthouse is mine.


In wanting to live in a lighthouse I grave what it seems to be able to offer: the limitation on external distractions which, for example in a crowded social housing complex, would surly be difficult to find. I do think that limitation often is necessary to creativity. Creativity blooms when seemingly unrelated ideas cross-pollinate each other and breed something new. This I have learned works best when alone.


And then there are times when I have enough of this self-enforced solitude and want to be out, out in the world, out in life, as I then think of it, somehow implying, all of a sudden, that I have lived not in life, but in some sort of limbo, bardo, half-life. After too much of solitude I want new energy to feed on. Otherwise I think I will go mad. Too much solitude, surely, is isolating and stifling to the creative spirit. Like all good things, solitude is only nourishing in moderation and can be deadly in excess. The dose is of utmost importance. Like with almost everything else in life, finding the right balance is the prescriptive remedy. But to apply it, I have learned, is not at all easy. 


Solitude means I am alone with myself, with my thoughts, with my ideas and I communicate mostly with myself, my inner theater. This inner dialogue is of great importance but carries with it the risk to un-learn communication with others, with the outside world. At best of times, after leaving my solitary home and going out to meet people, I find that I somehow grew stiff and awkward in communication. Most of times, though, I simply shy away from the onslaught, the overload on information. I have to get re-used to it and I do, but it takes time. 

Making the transit from one state to the other, from solitude to company, that is the hard part.


So far I have not found the ultimate right approach to lessen the stress of transit. The only agent I can rely on is time and repetition. But since I am dependent on both, solitude and communion, these are the labours I am willing to undergo. Iris Murdoch once wrote that “we became spiritual animals when we became verbal animals“. And this verbal animal here has to communicate, solitarily and in company.



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