Between Solitude and Solidarity
In 1971, Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize in Literature and said this in his speech:
“ . . . I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of nature.”
My two favorite things are deliciously long conversations and true aloneness. Solitude and solidarity. Nearness to self and others (nature is also important).
Loneliness is avoidance of self. A futile external search for wholeness. Solitude is the desire to be alone with yourself, the willingness to be your own coconspirator. The difference between solitude and loneliness is play.
Around the new year, Ken and I went for a short walk and completed our 2022 Exit Interviews (sent by Lisa, my queen of play). One question: what did most of your happiest moments this year have in common? We had very different answers. Ken’s happiest moments mostly took place while with our child. In most of mine, I was alone.
There are a handful of explanations for this, like I’m still the primary parent, which means the stream of regular interruption flows toward me. But I’m still fighting the urge to explain why I’m such a terrible and selfish mother and would choose myself over my own daughter.
I’ve said before that I don’t like living with other people all the time. Even when they’re some of my favorite people. One of the questions I come back to again and again in my writing is, Why do we think being in love means we should live together??
The point is I actually like myself. Like hanging out with myself. Almost all my self-destructive behavior (mostly alcohol) is a result of being trapped in a kind of limbo between true solitude and true solidarity. The in-between place sucks. I hate it. I’m not fully with the people in front of me, nor am I alone. I can’t access self and I can’t access others. I’ve spent so much time in that purgatory. Forgetting play is a brutal catch-22.
When I’m unwell, do I reach out to others? Do I contribute to my community or the world? Of course not. The life force necessary for activism and revolution, or just plain being nice to people, does not come from the grind. It comes from a well that needs replenishing. We can’t participate in true solidarity without knowing true solitude.
I worry often about how to teach solitude. As the parent of one child, I often feel like an understudy for some other kid. If I just hold this thing, or say these lines, the actual player will soon return to take my place. They never do. In my parental role, I flip-flop between a desire to keep my daughter engaged and irritation that I can’t complete a damn thing. I’m always trying to come up with things for us, or just her, to do.
My secret weapon is the shower. When I announce I’m going into the bathroom, there’s a whine or two and then I shut the door. When I come out, I try to move quietly, because without fail, in those 9 or 13 minutes, she’s gone deep into some kind of play. Sometimes she’s bustling around the house gathering supplies, sometimes hunched over a table statue-still. But the focus is the same.
It’s that boredom, the hump. We have to actually be alone to find out what we like to do when we’re alone. Even as a solitude evangelist, I know that hump well and avoid it regularly. Instead of sitting in discomfort for a few seconds, I’ll binge a tv show and come out of it just as depleted as I went in (yes, lots of great tv also fills me up).
It’s not lost on me that I also model solitude. I have a daughter who’s growing up with a mother who clearly expresses a need for alone time. It may or may not ever become conscious for her, but I know she feels the difference when I return. When I get time for true solitude, I return ready to be truly with her. That is poetry-as-action.
Optional Assignment:
As you go through your day, see if you can find 5 moments when you’re truly present with yourself and/or with others. Solitude and/or solidarity. Bonus points for noticing when it’s neither and giving that zone a fun name.
I'm often frustrated by being characterized as an extrovert. Maybe there's a Newton's Law of Temperament: for every highly social experience there is an equal and opposite need for aloneness.
My favorite nugget here:
“Loneliness is avoidance of self”
Concise and perfect expression of what often feels complex and confusing to express. As a person who rarely (never?) experiences loneliness, I easily find myself in the role of the “solitude evangelist”, another great zinger. These words cut to the heart of it.