Some time ago I thought to myself, I have spent my life single and alone. Growing up with a brother ten years older, I was by myself, mostly, other than when I was with adults, or my friends. I was profoundly aware of my aloneness, I was used to it, even though I didn't appreciate or understand what it all meant.
I believe I am fortunate to be a creative individual, because I found solace, and a diversion in creating art, entertaining myself, making others laugh, or playing music. I am a social individual who enjoys the interaction with others, but in moderation. I can be one of those who at times, prefers the company of animals over humans. Animals have always been my companions who will love and accept you unconditionally. I'm lost without my critters.
As a young teenager I craved the business of city life, being brought up in Toronto and in other cities. I attended art school in the city. There were many people, places, and things that I loved about it, but simultaneously I was loosing myself, and my way in life, being consumed with substance abuse and continuous unhealthy relationships. This all resulted in what I call, the hole in my soul, which I could never fill, but was desperately trying to do find something to complete me. I was never comfortable in my own skin, and was unhappy with my life with really no sense of where I belonged or who I was.
After coming to understand, in a painful way, that I was very unhappy, I reflected on asking myself, what I really wanted in life, and what I needed to be happy, and how I could go about finding the answers to my questions. The one paramount question I asked, made all the difference for me, when I finally got the answer. When was the happiest time in my life? The answer to my question came immediately, and quite easily, and I think the question had been waiting to be asked. The answer was when I had the experiences of being with nature, in the countryside, during my childhood, particularly when my family would take that seemingly never ending road, trip eating copious numbers of my mother's sandwiches, while my father drove like he was on a mission, right through, from Ontario to Nova Scotia.
It was a wonderful feeling to finally arrive at my grandmother's house. Everything had and was in it's own place, and this was mine, Nova Scotia. I would play for hours by myself with her nick-knacks on the living room floor, creating menageries and the world of my own imaginings. Spending glorious Summer days playing the piano, painting pictures, or going for long walks with my mother, or swimming in the ocean.
Being in the garden with my grandfather, or on the swing that he'd made in his old shed especially for me, all these are memories of comforting solitude, and happiness for having had a strong sense of belonging, because I was surrounded with nature and I felt love.
Today I enjoy my solitude every day, living in the countryside, close to the woods, to the water, and surrounded by nature. This is so good for my soul and I feel a deep sense of happiness because this is where I belong and I know I am loved.
People ask me, do you like living it there? I answer, I must, I've lived here for twenty years, alone, comfortable in my own skin, clean and sober for twenty years and I no longer suffer from the hole in the soul.
Today I have posted the following article about solitude and creativity, from one of my very favourite sites, Brain Pickings.
by Maria Popova
“We live in a society which sees high self-esteem
as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this
admirable and desirable person.”
If the odds of finding one’s soul mate are
so dreadfully dismal and the secret of lasting love is
largely a matter of concession, is it any wonder that a growing number of people choose to
go solo?
The choice of solitude, of active aloneness, has relevance not only to
romance but to all human bonds — even Emerson, perhaps the
most eloquent champion of friendship
in the English language, lived a significant portion of his life in
active solitude, the very state that enabled him to produce his enduring
essays and journals. And yet that choice is one our culture treats with
equal parts apprehension and contempt, particularly in our age of
fetishistic connectivity. Hemingway’s famous assertion that
solitude is essential for creative work is perhaps so oft-cited precisely because it is so radical and unnerving in its proposition.
A friend recently relayed an illustrative anecdote: One evening
during a short retreat in Mexico by herself, she entered the local
restaurant and asked to be seated. Upon realizing she was to dine alone,
the waitstaff escorted her to the back with a blend of puzzlement and
pity, so as not to dilute the resort’s carefully engineered illusory
landscape of coupled bliss. (It’s worth noting that this unsettling
incident, which is as much about the stigma of being single as about the
profound failure to honor
the art of being alone, is one women are still far more likely to confront than men; some
live to tell about it.)
Solitude, the kind we elect ourselves, is met with judgement and
enslaved by stigma. It is also a capacity
absolutely essential for a full life.
That paradox is what British author
Sara Maitland explores in
How to Be Alone (
public library) — the latest installment in
The School of Life’s
thoughtful crusade to reclaim the traditional self-help genre in a
series of intelligent, non-self-helpy yet immeasurably helpful guides to
such aspects of modern living as
finding fulfilling work,
cultivating a healthier relationship with sex,
worrying less about money, and
staying sane.
While Maitland lives in a region of Scotland with one of the lowest
population densities in Europe, where the nearest supermarket is more
than twenty miles away and there is no cell service (pause on that for a
moment), she wasn’t always a loner — she grew up in a big, close-knit
family as one of six children. It was only when she became transfixed by
the notion of silence, the subject of her
previous book, that she arrived, obliquely, at solitude. She writes:
I got fascinated by silence; by what happens to the human
spirit, to identity and personality when the talking stops, when you
press the off button, when you venture out into that enormous emptiness.
I was interested in silence as a lost cultural phenomenon, as a thing
of beauty and as a space that had been explored and used over and over
again by different individuals, for different reasons and with wildly
differing results. I began to use my own life as a sort of laboratory to
test some ideas and to find out what it felt like. Almost to my
surprise, I found I loved silence. It suited me. I got greedy for more.
In my hunt for more silence, I found this valley and built a house here,
on the ruins of an old shepherd’s cottage.
Illustration by Alessandro Sanna from 'The River.' Click image for more.
Maitland’s interest in solitude, however, is somewhat different from
that in silence — while private in its origin, it springs from a
public-facing concern about the need to address “a serious social and
psychological problem around solitude,” a desire to “allay people’s
fears and then help them actively enjoy time spent in solitude.” And so
she does, posing the central, “slippery” question of this predicament:
Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being.
How have we arrived, in the relatively prosperous developed world, at
least, at a cultural moment which values autonomy, personal freedom,
fulfillment and human rights, and above all individualism, more highly
than they have ever been valued before in human history, but at the same
time these autonomous, free, self-fulfilling individuals are terrified
of being alone with themselves?
We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of
well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and
desirable person.
We see moral and social conventions as inhibitions on our personal
freedoms, and yet we are frightened of anyone who goes away from the
crowd and develops “eccentric” habits.
We believe that everyone has a singular personal “voice” and is,
moreover, unquestionably creative, but we treat with dark suspicion (at
best) anyone who uses one of the most clearly established methods of
developing that creativity — solitude.
We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.
We are supposed now to seek our own fulfillment, to act on
our feelings, to achieve authenticity and personal happiness — but
mysteriously not do it on our own.
Today, more than ever, the charge carries both moral judgement and weak logic.
Illustration by Maurice Sendak from 'Open House for Butterflies' by Ruth Krauss. Click image for more.
Curiously, and importantly, mastering the art of solitude doesn’t
make us more antisocial but, to the contrary, better able to connect. By
being intimate with our own inner life — that frightening and often
foreign landscape that philosopher Martha Nussbaum so eloquently
urged us to explore despite our fear — frees us to reach greater, more dimensional intimacy with others. Maitland writes:
Nothing is more destructive of warm relations than the
person who endlessly “doesn’t mind.” They do not seem to be a full
individual if they have nothing of their own to “bring to the table,” so
to speak. This suggests that even those who know that they are best and
most fully themselves in relationships (of whatever kind) need a
capacity to be alone, and probably at least some occasions to use that
ability. If you know who you are and know that you are relating to
others because you want to, rather than because you are trapped
(unfree), in desperate need and greed, because you fear you will not
exist without someone to affirm that fact, then you are free. Some
solitude can in fact create better relationships, because they will be
freer ones.
And yet the value of aloneness has descended into a downward spiral
of social judgment over the course of humanity. Citing the rise of “male
spinsters” in the U.S. census — men over forty who never married, up
from 6% in 1980 to 16% today — Maitland traces the odd cultural
distortion of the concept itself:
In the Middle Ages the word “spinster” was a compliment. A
spinster was someone, usually a woman, who could spin well: a woman who
could spin well was financially self-sufficient — it was one of the
very few ways that mediaeval women could achieve economic independence.
The word was generously applied to all women at the point of marriage as
a way of saying they came into the relationship freely, from personal
choice, not financial desperation. Now it is an insult, because we fear
“for” such women — and now men as well — who are probably “sociopaths.”
This fairly modern attitude, which casts voluntary aloneness as a
toxic trifecta of “sad, mad, and bad” — is reinforced via rather
dogmatic circular logic that doesn’t afford those who choose solitude
the basic dignity of their own choice. Reflecting on the prevalent
response of pity — triggered by the “sad” portion of the dogma —
Maitland plays out the exasperating impossibility of refuting such
social assumptions:
If you say, “Well, no actually; I am very happy,” the
denial is held to prove the case. Recently someone trying to condole
with me in my misery said, when I assured them I was in fact happy, “You
may think you are.” But happiness is a feeling. I do not think it — I
feel it. I may, of course, be living in a fool’s paradise and the whole
edifice of joy and contentment is going to crash around my ears sometime
soon, but at the moment I am either lying or reporting the truth. My
happiness cannot, by the very nature of happiness, be something I think I
feel but don’t really feel. There is no possible response that does not
descend almost immediately to the school-playground level of “Did,
didn’t; did, didn’t.”
Underlying these attitudes, Maitland argues, is the central driver of
fear — fear of those radically different from us, who make choices we
don’t necessarily understand. This drives us, in turn, to project our
fright onto others, often in the form of anger — a manifestation, at
once sad, mad, and bad, of Anaïs Nin’s memorable observation that
“it is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.”
Illustration by Marianne Dubuc from 'The Lion and the Bird.' Click image for more.
These persistently reinforced social fears, she notes, have chilling consequences:
If you tell people enough times that they are unhappy,
incomplete, possibly insane and definitely selfish there is bound to
come a grey morning when they wake up with the beginning of a nasty cold
and wonder if they are lonely rather than simply “alone.”
(This crucial difference between aloneness and loneliness, in fact,
is not only central to our psychological unease but also enacted even in
our bodies — while solitude may be essential for creativity and key to
the mythology of genius, loneliness, scientists have found,
has deadly physical consequences on our risk for everything from heart disease to dementia.)
Paradoxically, Maitland points out, many of our most celebrated
cultural icons had solitude embedded in their lifestyle and spirit, from
great explorers and adventurers to famous “geniuses.” She cites the
great silent film actor Greta Garbo, a famous loner, as a particularly
poignant example:
Garbo introduced a subtlety of expression to the art of
silent acting and that its effect on audiences cannot be exaggerated… In
retirement she adopted a lifestyle of both simplicity and leisure,
sometimes just ‘drifting’. But she always had close friends with whom
she socialized and travelled. She did not marry but did have serious
love affairs with both men and women. She collected art. She walked,
alone and with companions, especially in New York. She was a skillful
paparazzi-avoider. Since she chose to retire, and for the rest of her
life consistently declined opportunities to make further films, it is
reasonable to suppose that she was content with that choice.
It is in fact evident that a great many people, for many different
reasons, throughout history and across cultures, have sought out
solitude to the extent that Garbo did, and after experiencing that
lifestyle for a while continue to uphold their choices, even when they
have perfectly good opportunities to live more social lives.
So how did our present attitudes toward solitude emerge? Maitland
argues that our lamentable refusal to afford those who choose aloneness
“the normal tolerance of difference on which we pride ourselves
elsewhere” is the result of a “very deep cultural confusion”:
For two millennia, at least, we have been trying to live
with two radically contrasting and opposed models of what the good life
would or should be. Culturally, there is a slightly slick tendency to
blame all our woes, and especially our social difficulties, either on a
crude social Darwinism or on an ill-defined package called the
“Judaeo-Christian paradigm” or “tradition.” Apparently this is why,
among other things, we have so much difficulty with sex (both other
people’s and our own); why women remain unequal; why we are committed to
world domination and ecological destruction; and why we are not as
perfectly happy as we deserve. I, for one, do not believe this — but I
do believe that we suffer from trying to hold together the values of
Judaeo-Christianity (inasmuch as we understand them) and the values of
classical civilization, and they really do not fit.
She traces the evolution of that confusion all the way back to the
Roman Empire, with its ideals of public and social life. Even the word
“civilization” bespeaks these values — it comes from
civis,
Latin for “citizen.” (Though it warrants noting that one of the greatest
and most enduring Roman exports issued the memorable admonition that
“all those who call you to themselves draw you away from yourself.”)
Still, the Romans were notorious for their lust for power, honor, and
glory — ideals invariably social in nature and crucial to the political
cohesion of society when confronted with the barbarians at the gate.
Maitland writes:
In these circumstances solitude is threatening — without a
common and embedded religious faith to give shared meaning to the
choice, being alone is a challenge to the security of those clinging
desperately to a sinking raft. People who pull out and “go solo” are
exposing the danger while apparently escaping the engagement.
Maitland fast-forwards to our present predicament, the product of millennia of cultural baggage:
No wonder we are frightened of those who desire and
aspire to be alone, if only a little more than has been acceptable in
recent social forms. No wonder we want to establish solitude as “sad,
mad and bad” — consciously or unconsciously, those of us who want to do
something so markedly countercultural are exposing, and even widening,
the rift lines.
But the truth is, the present paradigm is not really working. Despite
the intense care and attention lavished on the individual ego; despite
over a century of trying to “raise self-esteem” in the peculiar belief
that it will simultaneously enhance individuality and create good
citizens; despite valiant attempts to consolidate relationships and
lower inhibitions; despite intimidating efforts to dragoon the more
independent-minded and creative to become “team players”; despite the
promises of personal freedom made to us by neoliberalism and the cult of
individualism and rights — despite all this, the well seems to be
running dry. We are living in a society marked by unhappy children,
alienated youth, politically disengaged adults, stultifying consumerism,
escalating inequality, deeply scary wobbles in the whole economic
system, soaring rates of mental ill-health and a planet so damaged that
we may well end up destroying the whole enterprise.
Of course we also live in a world of great beauty, sacrificial and
passionate love, tenderness, prosperity, courage and joy. But quite a
lot of all that seems to happen regardless of the paradigm and the high
thoughts of philosophy. It has always happened. It is precisely because
it has always happened that we go on wrestling with these issues in the
hope that it can happen more often and for more people.
And wrestle we do, often trying to grasp and cling our way out of
solitude — a state we don’t fully understand and can’t fully inhabit to
reap its rewards. Our two most common tactics for shielding against
solitude, Maitland notes, are the offensive fear-and-projection
strategy, where we criticize those capable of finding joy in solitude
and condemn them to the sad-mad-bad paradigm, and the defensive
approach, where we attempt to insulate ourselves from the risk of
aloneness by obsessively accumulating a vast network of social ties as a
kind of “insurance policy.” In one of her most quietly poignant asides,
Maitland whispers:
There is no number of friends on Facebook, contacts, connections or financial provision that can guarantee to protect us.
One of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s original watercolors for The Little Prince. Click image for more.
Our cultural ambivalence is also manifested in our chronic bias for extraversion despite growing evidence for
the power of introverts. Maitland writes:
At the same time as pursuing this “extrovert ideal,”
society gives out an opposite — though more subterranean — message. Most
people would still rather be described as sensitive, spiritual,
reflective, having rich inner lives and being good listeners than the
more extroverted opposites. I think we still admire the life of the
intellectual over that of the salesman; of the composer over the
performer (which is why pop stars constantly stress that they write
their own songs); of the craftsman over the politician; of the solo
adventurer over the package tourist… But the kind of unexamined but
mixed messages that society offers us in relation to being alone add to
the confusion; and confusion strengthens fear.
Among Maitland’s toolkit of “ideas for overturning negative views of
solitude and developing a positive sense of aloneness and a true
capacity to enjoy it” are the exploration of
reverie and the practice of
facing the fear.
She enumerates the five basic categories of rewards to be reaped from
unlearning our culturally conditioned fear of aloneness and learning how
to “do” solitude well:
- A deeper consciousness of oneself
- A deeper attunement to nature
- A deeper relationship with the transcendent (the numinous, the divine, the spiritual)
- Increased creativity
- An increased sense of freedom
In the remainder of
How to Be Alone,
Maitland goes on to offer a series of “exercises” along each of these
five directions of aspiration — psychological strategies for retuning
our relationship with solitude.
