I’ve been thinking
lately about “solitude” and what it means
and where we find it. Maybe it’s because so
many people I know feel under the gun, rushing
around trying to make their organizations,
their jobs – indeed, their lives – work.
All this busyness can produce the desire to
retreat or hunker down. But solitude is not
about that; rather it’s a way to deeply
connect with the individual and
public lives we
lead.
I’ve long been
interested in language and its implications for
community and public life. For instance, I’ve
looked at the connection between “grace”
and one’s public work, as well as notions of
“devotion” and “civic faith” and
“hope” and the relationship between
“imagination and reality.” Each word or
phrase holds special meaning for us in our
public efforts, and special implications for
what we say and
do.
“Solitude” is no
different. So, my first question for you is:
“Where do you find ‘solitude’ in your
life?” I already noted that I don’t think
of solitude as being about escaping from
others, from our troubles, from our work, but
rather a stillness that enables us to hear
ourselves, to return to our essence, to regain
a sense of our bearings. To escape would mean
to run away from others, even ourselves;
solitude is about turning toward
ourselves.
When people think
about where they find solitude, they often talk
about the “space” they are able to create
or enter. In such space, they tell me, a shift
in consciousness occurs that enables them to
gain a different perspective, to discover a new
take on things. This shift enables each of us
to see and hear ourselves again.
But there is an
important difference at work here between being
alone and being lonely, much like there is a
difference between being with yourself and
removing yourself from others. One person said
to me recently that their most intense and
meaningful moments of solitude occur in noisy
cafes. Perhaps it is the comfort of being
around others that gives this person the
ability to gain solitude. What about
you?
My next question for
you is: “How do you connect your solitude and
what emerges from it to your unfolding life?”
We live in, or through, time; this is different
from simply occupying space at any given
moment. Our lives, our work, our emotions are
created over the course of time, through
experiences, connections, iterations – and
pure chance. If this is true, which I believe
it is, then how do you connect your moments of
solitude over time?
This leads me to one
last point, which is about solitude and your
relationship to community and public life. When
we think of solitude it’s easy to think about
it in terms of ourselves. We do it by
ourselves, even if we are sitting among others
in that café; and it is often our own small
voice that we hear whisper to us in the silence
of solitude. But one beauty of solitude is that
by reconnecting with ourselves we are opening
up the possibilities to connect with others. By
turning toward ourselves, we make ourselves
able and willing to turn toward the other. When
we reclaim our urge to do good – to be good
– we rediscover that we can only achieve this
with others.
We must make room for solitude so that we can remember who we are, and why we must be in relationship with others to create the world we want.