Loneliness

Blue moon
you saw me standing alone
without a dream in my heart
without a love of my own…

How we dread loneliness and still it has inspired so much beautiful poetry, art, song, and literature! When we think of someone as being lonely, our heartstrings are pulled. Empathy floods us, as we realize how terrible it must feel.

I can remember a period in my own life when I felt so very lonely that it seemed as if life was unbearable if I couldn’t share it with someone. And when I look back on that time, what I really remember is how poignant that feeling was. No wonder it inspires the artist in us. When we dare express strong emotions like loneliness and grief, great art emerges, art that can touch the hearts of all the readers/listeners/viewers.

I think that one of the reasons for this, is that the expression of loneliness is really the expression of a much deeper yearning, a longing to feel connected to life itself. To feel connected to the deeper mystery that lies behind our daily lives, whatever name we give to it.

There is an existential aloneness that none of us can escape. Each of us is essentially alone, unique in our experience of life. We can avoid this feeling by focusing on our relationships, our children, our religion, our professional lives, or our social lives. And often we use these things to escape from this awareness of being alone. We dread loneliness in all its forms.

I think the best way to cope with this, is not to try and move away from the feeling of being alone but to move towards it. Don’t try to cover up or escape loneliness by distracting yourself. Allow the loneliness to pull you towards your deeper yearning - the yearning to lead a meaningful life, the yearning to feel connected to something bigger than yourself, the yearning to plumb the depths of your own capacity for expression.

It may lead you to new discoveries about yourself, who knows?


And my sincere apologies to my regular readers for the erratic appearence of the blog these days! As some of you know, I've been working on a book. Which is a challenging experience, to say the least, but it has proven very difficult to combine both types of writing. I will try to bring the frequency back up to normal soon. And I will keep you posted on the book!

Worry

My cat is a real night-huntress. And sometimes, when I get up in the morning, I don’t find her in her customary position: curled up, sleeping soundly on her blanket. Immediately, irrational fears pop into my head. Where is she? Did something happen? Usually, she comes running into the house five minutes later, meowing loudly, demanding attention. I didn’t have to worry. And still I do.

Worry is a form of fear, which I wrote about in an earlier blog (Emotions). But it’s not the immediate fear that helps us fight or flee when we’re in danger. It’s a more insidious fear: afraid of what we think might happen. Our mind conjures up possible scenarios, we grab onto the worst possible scenario, and start playing it, like a movie, over and over in our heads.

Remember falling in love? Remember worrying every time your beloved didn’t call, show up, pay you a compliment? I certainly do! Your mind starts saying, maybe he/she no longer loves me, maybe… Fear grabs hold of your mind and keeps you from sleeping.

If there is something you could or should do about the situation, to prevent that which you fear from happening, then at least there is a foundation to act from. Then the fear is a signal to act. However, unfortunately, we all tend to worry about things we can’t do anything about.

Yes, if anything happens to that fierce little huntress of mine, I will be very upset and sad. That doesn’t warrant locking her up in the house, however. It’s her nature to hunt and her life is as vulnerable to harm as mine. Worrying about it will not change that.

And if the person you’re in love with, starts drifting away, there’s also very little you can do about it. Worrying will only eat your energy away and cost you valuable sleep.

These are the moments that it’s invaluable to sit, mindfully, with your turmoil of emotions, observing what is happening, accepting it, breathing through it. Or to go out in nature and tell your worries to a tree or bird. Or to write, paint, or dance your feelings. In all things that happen in life, there’s a lesson to learn.

There is an old Mother Goose rhyme that expresses this very well:

For every ailment under the sun
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it.

Distraction

From time to time, I need to retreat into an empty space. Not doing, just being. That’s the place where I receive inspiration for my writing and other creations. My Muse is waiting there, to whisper wisdom, stories, and beautiful images into my ears.

However, I’m very good at doing everything but sitting quietly and being. And this has not only kept me from writing the blog for the past two weeks, it’s also kept me from other creations that are patiently waiting until I finally gather the focus to do them.

In the Wheel of the Four Directions, the South is the place of doing. During these lovely, long summer days I spend a great deal of time with my feet on the ground: working in the garden, organizing my house, giving workshops, etc. And in the evenings, when my body is tired of doing, I find other distractions: the webcam on the osprey nest, the World Championship Football, socializing with friends…

The West is the place of retreating inside oneself and just being. Open to receive whatever is being whispered in the stillness. That really does sound more like a place to be in the autumn, but in the endless cycles of life we do need to be in the West more often than once a year!

The rain we’re having today is a blessing. No temptation to go out and do things, no reason not to sit quietly and write. Yes, I know that writing is also doing but I can only get there through that quiet place.

And so I ask myself, what part of me is so resistant to retreating into the stillness? What inner voice whispers to me, right at this moment, to get up from writing this blog and go do the laundry?
“Just for a few minutes, you can always get back to this later,” the voice insinuates.

There is a part of me that doesn’t like the stillness, doesn’t like to stop doing. And so I sit quietly with that part of me, asking it what it needs. What is its concern, how can I convince it to leave me alone every once in a while? We strike a bargain, my doing voice and I. Once a day I’m allowed take a short break to just sit and be, to retreat inside and listen to the voice of my Muse, to gather inspiration, to write.

My part of the bargain is that I stop thinking negatively about that part of me that lets itself get distracted. It’s not much, but it’s a start… The laundry can wait.