OF SOLITUDE & LONELINESS

“Solitude is painful when one is young,  but delightful when one is more mature.”

~Albert Einstein~

Today, it was foggy. Very cold and the wind is chilling.

I went out to the woods as I always do and this time going up hill. I packed some egg sandwiches, an apple, two bananas, a bottle of water and a flask of hot coffee. I need these – to keep my hunger low and to keep my thirst away.

I still do feel like a zombie and I still act like a vampire for the lack of sleeping. Will have another check-up at the hospital tomorrow (no chemo) and they will send off the tests to the lab to make sure the results of the treatment do me good. They will see if there is the least 5% percentage of the cancer cells are shrinking and if that is the thing then the docs will be happy to share the news on not having to have to do masectomy. Praying that this will be so.

I spend my time alone today – kids are away to their grandma and will return tomorrow after finishing school. Even Amanda went to her grandma. I have decided that they go there today for I was really not feeling good at all. I was feeling dizzy most of the time and lying down make the headache even worse. I rest enough.

Now, I go.

I love to spend my time on my own some time. And you should spend some time alone – some time. Not just minutes and hours, but days and if the opportunity presents itself, weeks.

Time spent alone returns to you a hundredfold, because it is the proving ground of the spirit. You quickly find out if you are at peace with yourself, or if the meaning of your life is found only in the superficial affairs of the day. If it is in the superficial affairs of the day, time spent alone will throw you back upon yourself in a way that will make you grow in wisdom and inner-strength.

“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”

~Mother Theresa~

We can easily fill our days easily. We buy, we sell, we move from place to place. There is always more to be done, always a way to keep from staring into the still pool where life is more than the chatter of the small affairs of the mind.

If we are not careful, we begin to mistake this activity for meaning. We turn our lives into a series of tasks that can occupy all the hours of the clock and still leave us breathless with our sense of work left undone.

And there will always be work undone. We will die with work undone. The labors of life are endless. Better that you should accept the rhythms of life and know that there are times when you need to stop to draw a breath, no matter how great the labors are before you.

“Solitude is often the best society.”

~Proverb~

I sat on a bench facing the open field of grasses. Not much to see today and the place were covered with fog. Even the river looks haunting with white mist hovering like heated smoke coming out into thin air. Some flocks of birds shrieking from the woods faraway to the east and they flew across the otherside and dissappeared among the dark forest.

The day is quiet and I like that. It is most peaceful.

This is Solitude. Sounds like a poet`s word for being alone. But being alone, in itself, is nothing. It can be a breeding ground of loneliness as easily as a source of solitude.

Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming ONE with the space around you. It is a condition of union.

Loneliness is small, solitude is large. Loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands towards the infinite. Loneliness has its roots in words, in an external conversation that nobody answers; solitude has its roots in the great silence of Eternity.

And does that still sounds so poetic?

“It is loneliness when you yourself do not know who you really are.”

~Sherry~

In the many years of my life, I learned that too many people fear of being alone because they understand only LONELINESS as being empty, as having no one on their side, as being having nothing but themselves. Their understanding begins at the self, and they are comfortable only as long as they are the center of their understanding.

Solitude is about getting the “I “out of the center of our thoughts so that other parts of life can be experienced in their fullness. It is about abandoning the self as the focus of understanding, and giving ourselves over to the great flowing fabric of the universe.

For me, Nature is the clearest source of Solitude. The greatness of nature can overwhelm the insignificant chatter by which we measure most of our days. For most of us, the search involves a grinding of the gears as we slow from hurried to quiet to still to peaceful. But it is worth the struggle.

I stood there watching the world changes – colorful and blissful – beauty that has no measure to it – it has no end. Neither it has the beginning – it is just there. One has to SEE it, one has to know to FEEL it, one has to UNDERSTAND it that it is ever there.

A tree ceases to be an object and becomes a living thing, for example. We can smell its richness, hear its rustlings, sense its rhythms as it carries on its endless dance with the wind.

In this solitude silence, I too, become part of its symphony. Time changes from a series of moments strung together into a seamless motion riding on the rhythms of the stars. Loneliness is banished, solitude is in full flower, and I am one pulse with Life itself.

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smells better.”

~Henry Rollins~

I was born a jungle child. And I grew up as a jungle child. And I will live and die as a jungle child. Never will I cease to love nature as I was born not only in it, I was born with it. Here, I find my peace in this loneliness that blooms with colorful solitude. It is just beautiful.

Almost poetic, yes? Almost too soft, too gentle and yet it is that real.

Don`t you agree?