Solitude part 2

My question is: at what point does solitude become loneliness? When does the sweetness of our own company become a knawing pain and something we dread? After a week of solitude I start to crave company. A walk down the street lost in my owns thoughts becomes distracted by images of friednship and families that make my heart cry out for similar things. Solitude is essentially about retreating, it's about removing yourself from the over-connectedness of life to dwell in your own thughts and engage with the world as an individual. It's like a child lying content in the grass and looking at the sky, or exploring a garden. It is so easy for them to lose themselves in their own insignificance and to marvel at the greateness and largeness of their surroundings. But they still reach a point, however beautiful or exciting things are, when they wish to return home to the arms of a parent just to be reassured that they are irreplaceable to someone in this world.

I think at heart we are all still children: we long to explore, to be independent and grown-up and yet we still want interaction community and affirmation.

The danger of solitude is that we can retreat too far into ourselves. We become self-absorbed, self-indulgent and deeply, deeply lonely. We start to believe that we are to deep within ourselves for people to be able to reach in and pull us out. We stop listening to truth and start paying attention to the lies that we construct about ourselves, whether positive or negative. However much we try and resist it, we are built to be in relationships, to be connected, to interact. That doesn't mean that we have to be around people all the time, some of us need more solitude than others. Still, we all long for company at some point.

Simon Evans - Symptoms of Loneliness
At what point do you start to feel lonely?

No comments:

Post a Comment