Love Letters to My Life: #45 The Gifts of Solitude and Uncertainty

Turkey Feather - after the fight

(We know the day we were born, but most of us do not know the day we will die. This love letter to my life is written on the day I've designated as my death day: the 17th of every month, and reminds me to be grateful for my joy-filled life.)    

“To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.”

― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life 

In 2009, two years after Richard died, I finally wound up alone. I had delayed the approaching unknown for two years by living with family, but now the walls reverberated with the silence of an empty life. A friend reminded me that I needed to learn to live alone without feeling lonely. It wasn’t a new thought, but suddenly I understood that it wasn’t going to be easy.

    In the thirteen years since then, I’ve moved ten times. While each move made sense at the time, I now wonder if the fear of loneliness was a factor in that constant unsettling and resettling, as if the loneliness would disappear somewhere else.

    Many things shifted during all that movement, and perhaps the fear of loneliness finally quieted. In 2019 after I had been in Mexico for two years exploring that beautiful land, I had an overwhelming feeling that I needed to come “home,” so I moved to Reno, which was a bit odd since I had never lived there. However, what little family I had was there, just a few months later COVID hit. Suddenly, I was locked down. Meeting new people was almost impossible and, other than seeing family occasionally, I was truly alone.

It was different this time, I began to savor it.  

   

    I began work on an art project centered around the pandemic and also started escaping into nature more. During that strange, uncertain time,  solitude started to feel like a friend. It still felt awkward because the word solitude had been attached to an image of a cabin deep in the woods. How could this be solitude if I still saw people on my walks, talked to people (at a distance) and watched the world adjusting on social media? 

However, the feelings loneliness, or that I was missing something had faded. I felt quiet and amazingly peaceful. My life during the pandemic required minimal adjustment since I didn’t have a job or children. All I had was time and it was all mine to do with as I wished. That took on a rhythm as I made a lot of art, wrote my impressions of the world as I saw it through social media, contemplated life and what was truly important to me. What emerged was a strong need to be closer to nature. However, that required another move.

It’s been about a year and a half now that I’ve lived in two stationary RVs: one summer place on a beautiful lake in Northern California, and the rest of the year in an oak forest just outside the mountain town of Julian in San Diego County. 

I’ve loved both places, however another move now presents itself. In 1980, Richard and I moved to Santa Barbara and I fell head over heels in love with its beauty, weather, beaches ... just everything about it. When a shift in job situations hit in 2002, we were forced to move. I grieved as I thought it was forever, knowing we would never be able to re-enter the real estate market. I closed the Santa Barbara door, thinking it was forever.

Now, a possibility has appeared and I’m torn between excitement at being able to move back and knowing that I will probably never again have this almost unbroken solitude that I have come to cherish. In the late 60s when the anti-war movement was turning violent, Isla Vista, the home of the University of California, Santa Barbara, became the site of riots and the burning of the Bank of America.

One side effect of that time was that student population plummeted and a dorm that had just been completed wasn’t needed. It was sold to a group of investors who turned it into a non-profit senior apartment complex … and, probably, my new home. I’m on the waiting list and it looks like a couple of possibilities are becoming available.

It has been interesting to watch my mood swings, from deep excitement to an underlying unease. Fortunately, I’ve had three months to unpack the conflicting feelings and recognize that this is a major change, and most likely a permanent one. Being part of a close community is not something I’ve done for a long time and, therefore, it’s clouded by uncertainty.

Turning to my quote database, the first that came up was from the Buddhist Monk Yoshida Kenko who reminds me.

"Life's most precious gift is uncertainty."

That makes me smile. We’ll see where I am this time next month.

The Gift of Solitude

Surf School

I awakened on the 4th with the wolf of solitude scratching at my door.  I know his sounds by now and by mid-afternoon, with friends and family miles away and the celebrations popping in the near and far distance, he was beginning to howl. 

Solitude is something I've chosen … moving to a new place where I know no one and choosing work that feeds on solitude.  However, I want solitude to be a wrap I put on and take off at my own whims … not a fierce and hungry wolf who sometimes glides silently through the moonlit woods, free to explore the world around him, and sometimes howls and twists to get free of what feels like the trap that binds him.

But, solitude is what it is and I'm beginning to know him and his ways well.  I know what soothes him and what follows a siege of trying to break free from that fearful, dark night. Dawn always comes, bringing with it new light, new grace.  I've learned a small portion of patience, so I wait … wait for the storm to pass, wait for the return of the tingle of anticipation.

This morning it rushed back in with the tide as I walked near the edge of the water.  Gentle waves whispered, "Something … something new … something new is coming … something new is forming …"  I know this to be true … something new is always coming … always coming to each of us.  As our ancient friend Heraclitus reminded us, we never step twice into the same river.  A year from now life will be new and different … maybe better, maybe worse, maybe just different. 

Right now the future coming toward me is the tiniest sprout, green and unidentifiable.  Will it be a sheltering oak or a red peony … or merely a weed to be plucked?  I do not know and it doesn't matter what I want it to be, because it will be what it is and my wishing it to be one or the other matters not.  All I'm called to do is nourish it … feeding it, watering it … tending it by savoring each moment of Now.  For regardless of what shape the coming takes, it will grow strong or falter based on the actions, feelings and beliefs of each tiny present moment.

So, walking in the soft, marine-layered morning, I drink in the gliding pelicans in their irregular formations, the generations of walkers, joggers and surfers, the bouncing white volley balls, the squealing inlanders touching the surprisingly chill waters of "sunny California" under a still sunless sky, the dogs sniffing the trace of their compatriots along paths of seaweed while a waggle-tailed puppy calls "Please come play with me!" to every passerby, the photographers with long lenses peering into rock crannies for scampering crabs, and beach combers sharing their gatherings.  

All of this ... the gift of solitude … a reminder that whatever is coming, the only thing I truly have is this precious and perfect moment.  Remembering that humbles me and makes me grateful.

The Joyful Angst of Solitude

Call it joyful. Call it angst. Call it what it really is ... a frightening, overwhelming aloneness ... a howling wolf in the dead of winter trying to chew its own leg free of the steel trap that binds it in the dark night. Its blackness stretches endless before me obliterating everything, blinding me, deafening me with its endless message of pain, loss and abandonment. Translation: It sucks ... big time. After a lifetime of companionship and longing for the joys of solitude, I now have solitude and long for the joys of companionship. Be careful what you wish for.

Rilke says:

"Don't be confused by surfaces; in the depths everything becomes law. What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. Walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours--that is what you must be able to attain."

I say: Rilke sucks. Yesterday I had lunch in a lovely park filled with families and children and dogs chasing each other in circles. Togetherness, family and friendship surrounded me but did not include me or invite me in. I am on the fringes looking in ... just like the lonely little girl of my childhood, nosed pressed to the screen doors of the neighborhood asking if there were any children there who could come out and play. Now I'm expected to look in the screen doors of my own soul and ask if there is anyone there (here?) who wants to come out? And this is supposed to bring me joy?

I turn to a more modern source and Wikipedia says:

Solitude is a state of seclusion or isolation; i.e., lack of contact with people. It may stem from bad relationships, deliberate choice, contagious disease, disfiguring features, repulsive personal habits, mental illness, or circumstances of employment or situation (see castaway).

Castaway ... that's what I feel like. I've been cast away by death, by rejection, by circumstance. I would like to take my solitude in small doses, thank you very much. A day here, a week there. Not this life sentence of aloneness, not this loneliness that seems to be stalking me through the long night.

Turning to what others say about solitude, I find:

"There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall."
~Colette

"When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves."
~Eda LeShan

"The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude." ~Voltaire

And, while reading Thoreau on Solitude, I find that he, at least briefly, questioned the value of solitude and wondered if the near "neighborhood of man was not essential to a
serene and healthy life." But he goes on to recognize a pattern in his own thinking, "But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery."

I recognize that "slight insanity" in my own mind. I am the wolf chewing away at my own leg to get free of this dark sense of loneliness ... but I am also the wolf roaming the quiet, moon lit woods called ever forward by sights and sounds of the world of freedom and solitude.

I foresee my own recovery. I foresee a time when I can be "alone without being lonely" as a dear friend who learned this lesson earlier in life describes it. I foresee a time when solitude is more joyful than angst. And, I remind myself to relax and breathe in the joy of each moment. I remind myself to follow Voltaire's advice to create a life of "busy solitude."