Stillness 5-21:
One of the gloomiest philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote: “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; … if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.” I think he’s right, but I also think that we can be alone and love our solitude, whether or not we live alone or with other people–with our families, housemates, or life partners. And that we can feel ourselves to be inwardly free, no matter what outer prison bars appear to contain us: loneliness, longing, or exhaustion.
The enforced isolation we’ve had to endure these past two months has brought this question of solitude into sharp focus for many of us. Would you prefer to be with someone—anyone—than to be alone? If you’re living with someone who’s become difficult, how do you regain and retain a sense of solitude and freedom in your soul so it doesn’t drive you mad?
I think that consciously having no assumptions about what constitutes a good or bad relationship, and making no judgments about how people should or shouldn’t get along, is key to our well-being, whether or not we’re squashed with too many family members in a too-small apartment, or whether we’re alone in a great, empty mansion, or anything in between. I think consciously practicing stillness is the only way to find inner peace, and we can do that no matter what our outer circumstances. Stillness is the key to solitude, and solitude is the key to freedom, and freedom is the key to joy.
Yes, I believe we can all be free in our soul, no matter what. Yesterday, I came across a poem called The Bird by Arthur Symonds, and it lifted my own cloud of confusion and sorrow about the world and turned it into something magical:
The Bird
I have grown tired of sorrow and human tears
Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears,
A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.
I have grown tired of rapture and love’s desire;
Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire
Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.
I would wash the dust of the world in a soft green flood;
Here between sea and sea in the fairy wood,
I have found a delicate wave-green solitude.
Here, in the fairy wood, between sea and sea,
I have heard the song of a fairy bird in a tree,
And the peace that is not in the world has flown to me.
—Arthur Symons