The first time I heard of this word was when I was in Class IV. Solitude. It was a three word moral science exercise - silence, solitude and prayer - and I still remember how quiet I felt inside while doing the exercise. Among other images - I see the tops of very tall trees swaying in the wind and their green leaves are silently swishing...there is a forest. An image of tall trees in a forest. That's one of the things I see when I hear or contemplate upon the word solitude.
I'm all for silence and solitude, and so it's not that I find the value placed on them as odd. What I find odd is people talking about them. And of course I am too. When we have to start talking about some things as being valuable and as being essential and when we have to harp on their value not by re-affirming their value but to state that such-and-such has value to begin with - I start wondering whether their value has already been sullied and how it is that such invaluable aspects of life started losing their significance. I've been deeply curious about values and the things that humans and different humans value (but about that another day) and I'm back to wondering how some parts of life can be made to be seen as being valuable. If a human being has never really been alone or has hated being alone or has been deeply distressed by the experience or has found it discomfiting or unbearable or useless or mind-numbing - I wonder whether there's anything anyone can do or say to make the person suddenly see silence and solitude as being valuable.
While I'm on the topic maybe I'll ramble a bit about how I see silence and solitude. This is biased. I can't talk here about the millions who cannot afford silence or solitude because they are busy everyday trying to get food and water and basic amenities or are merely trying to exist because of terrible life-circumstances. That would be a different question requiring a space of its own. But there are people who even though they have the possibility of engaging in quiet moments, don't want to be alone....not that being alone or the ability of being alone automatically makes someone superior or better or deserving of praise but even that is something to think about.
One may argue as I often do (with myself) that being alone can be a precious experience only if a person has certain likes which go well with the experience of being alone. Reading - unless one is reading out aloud to somebody else (which has a time and a place, and that too only if one can read well!) must be done alone. Related to reading, I do have some reservations and some strange musings....but about those, another day.
Painting is something I used to engage in quite often at one point. Now, almost never. If I were an artist with some skill (not too much - only some) then maybe it may have been like writing but as it stands I cannot paint much and if I am able to paint something that looks like what it's supposed to - it's more often due to sheer luck than any aspect of skill or talent or ability. Yet when one does paint, and this is about great artists and sculptors - from the bits and pieces that I've read about them - they liked and indeed required solitude in order to work; and even people who paint well but are not great and/or famous artists like the time spent alone with their easel, paint-brush, paper and colour palette.
I've noticed that I cannot read as I would like to nor paint (as haphazardly as I do) unless I'm non-fidgety inside. There has to be some semblance of a non-chaotic mind and non-chaotic innards to be able to focus in order to read a piece of writing as it is meant to be read. But there is something not quite black or white about the whole process - at least insofar as reading is concerned. For sometimes I search for a piece of writing - an essay, a story, a book - because my mind is blowing around aimlessly or very purposefully but without any release or relief, and reading the half-remembered piece provides some clarity. Sometimes coming across a piece of writing at the right time somehow pacifies the mind in giving it a fruitful path to pursue rather than just letting it toss and turn on nothing. It may be a delusion of calmness that is evoked and the fruitful path sometimes may not turn out to be very fruitful. Nonetheless there is something that happens that makes one feel less fratchy and somewhat less hopeless inside. Sometimes one chances upon an amusing piece and one is able to laugh, and so laughing one may realise that one is taking oneself too seriously. At other moments one may be able to read something which simply and eloquently speaks to one like a blood-and-bones human being responding to a question....and sometimes it's impossible to read. It really is.
Then there's listening to music. Different kinds of music can be listened to when there is company but sometimes I cannot listen and do not want to listen to certain pieces when there is company. Some pieces must be heard alone sometimes. I'm not dismissing the possibility of experiencing the fullness of music in company - but in most instances and on an average - I'd say listening to music too is something best done on one's own. I don't play a musical instrument - but people who do, whether gifted or semi-gifted, like playing on their own to themselves. I've seen that in one close friend. He used to play his violin whether or not anybody was around, and he didn't like being bothered when he was playing. Musicians might like and even love playing for others but if nobody's around, that's perfectly fine...and even when musicians play with people around - they seem to not really notice. I'm not talking about noisy rock musicians, here.
Then there is walking around a forest (provided there is a relatively safe, quiet forest or a wooded area or some trails where one can go for a walk). Sometimes one needs to go on one's own, by oneself. Walking briskly, taking one's time, listening to the trees rustle, hearing the river or the stream for a long time before actually going and sitting near it or sticking one's toes into it...listening to the mighty babble of birds (which I would be hard-pressed to identify when I'm by myself) and the trees swishing and swaying - trees that one can hear in fall and in summer with the wind - even before one sees them. Can be lovely with the right company. That is true. It can be sometimes. But I cannot bear walking with people who insist on talking nineteen to the dozen at the top of their lungs when they're walking with me through a forest. The voices bear down on my head like a helmet. I think I'm an auditory person - maybe that could be the reason - and while I'm quite sure that I'm hard of hearing I also have sensitive ear-drums and auditory nerves (which is why I've entirely stopped singing to myself), so while a walk through the woods may be a lovely or a joyous or a beautiful experience with the right sort of company - whether real or imagined - the walk is completely spoiled and soiled with company that yaks.
Now all of these above mentioned activities and some more - like going to an art gallery or going to hear live music or going around a city to visit historical sites or a temple or a cathedral or a monastery, or the mountains or a book-shop or a library or a quiet sea-beach or even having a quiet meal...and other activities - like gardening, carpentry, cooking, and so on can be potentially very fulfilling in select company, although some people really do enjoy doing some activities on their own and by themselves. There is also a time and a place for silence even when in company...there is the aspect of companionable silence. There is a stillness. Although these days, companionable silence and stillness probably means five people sitting around the table with everyone fiddling with his or her phone and sending text messages to god-knows-whom.
Thinking, for the most part, is a personal activity requiring one to exert one's own mind and to gather one's own thoughts and to be with oneself. Introspecting, reflecting, looking over, and wondering have to be done on one's own with one's own mind. One can argue with other people later. One can ask other people later. One can have conversations and discussions later....yet there is a time and a place where one has to sit with one's own thoughts, one's own images, one's own consciousness (or lack of the same), one's voice/many voices, one's own acts of omission and commission...one can argue with one's many selves or just sit and be with oneself or be appalled with oneself or be very confuzzled or be quiet but the activity has to be done in comparative silence, and there is no substitute for this sort of thinking. And it has to be done - for better or for worse. In sickness and in health till death comes in and takes one away. Maybe there will be no enlightenment at all and at no level. Maybe there will be less and less that becomes clear. Maybe one will stubbornly hold fast to one's tiny bit of light and know nothing more. Maybe one will be no better than what one has been or maybe one will be the same. Maybe one will be a better and balanced human being, slowly and steadily and gradually. Maybe one will, at least, not forget what one needs to remember. Or maybe one will die a dolt. Who knows....but it's still something that has to be done, and done alone. And I know how difficult it is to be silent inside. It's a madhouse in there. One can hardly listen to what's important because of the mindless, senseless, idiotic chatter.
I can't talk much about meditation. I have tried it many times over but there is very little I understand about meditation. I don't know whether I am doing it right or what exactly I'm supposed to be doing. But I'm assuming that it's something one has to do by oneself and on own's own and in silence...
What else? There's writing. One can show the written bit to another later. One can ask for a response later. One can push it into someone's face later. One can be embarassed about showing it to anyone...but when one is writing - that is what one is doing. There really are no other thoughts, no other feelings, no other anythings really. Painting for me is always a matter of being able to gift the hopefully recognisable and not-too-bad finished product to someone else. Writing however is not done with the solitary intention of sharing every bit of the written word. Maybe if I could write fiction....I'm quite sure I would have loved sharing the tales but most often when I write what I do, even when I'm writing for no clear reason but that I need to write, I have a strangely fulfilling time. While writing one lives in another world and in another state-of-being for those moments. One is quite alone and not even with oneself and somewhat disembodied. Maybe that's the reason that one sometimes experiences an equally intense need to communicate with some human being with whom one can relate to after something is written.
I am quite convinced that somewhere inside one always knows what one is...it's a matter of following the course if one can and if one has the motivation and the drive and the discipline to do what one is. As I keep reading the experiences of those writers whose writings I enjoy reading I am still surprised and somewhat alarmed to note how prolific and at how disciplined they were in their work (i.e. writing) habits by their late teens. That's when I raise my eyebrows at myself. My interesting seeds never got planted and now they have, as somebody once prophetically and rather poetically predicted, been blown away by the wind or have been pecked at by the birds. It's true. If one doesn't follow an idea for whatever reasons - it really does disintegrate at some point. But I digress...
Then of course there is dying. I don't know too much about the experience of death but I'm assuming one dies alone. I hope one isn't lonely while dying but it's something one does alone.
I know I've missed listing all the different sorts of activities that people engage in when alone but others are most likely to have their own lists...
The loneliness and meaninglessness that one experiences are other matters.
