This is How Lonliness Leads to Greatness

 Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self ~May Sarton

I consider myself an expert on loneliness, though I don’t say that with pride or satisfaction. That’s just the way things have been for me. Our family moved around constantly while I was young, so I spent a lot of time by myself when I wished I was with others. Both tendencies followed me into my adult years — moving a lot and spending a lot of time alone — so I’ve had plenty of time to feel loneliness, ponder loneliness, and learn to dislike loneliness a great deal.

A lonly middle-aged man

I don’t regret those times at all. Through loneliness I’ve learned the beauty and wealth and necessity of solitude, and I’ve learned to be able to do many things on my own that many people would love to be able to do. I

’m not bothered at all by sitting alone at a table in a crowded restaurant, and I’m not afraid to leave a negative situation just because I might be alone. I never allowed myself to be dragged into a negative relationship just because I was afraid of being alone. I never dread being alone, and I often look forward to it, for I know just how healing it can be.

I didn’t marry until I was 38, either, so I had an awful lot of time to learn about loneliness.

Lonely man pondering 

Here’s much of what I learned. I can’t tell it all because I’m not sure that I’m fully aware of all that I’ve learned.

My loneliness depends on my perspective. I can be alone and be lonely, or I can be alone and enjoy the quiet time and the chance I have to reflect, meditate, be introspective.

According to Aristotle, to live alone one must be either a beast or a god. He also adds that leaving out the third case: one must be both — a philosopher.

Aristotle

Yes, perhaps I am a philosopher. When I’m with myself, I can listen to whatever music I want, watch what I want on TV (or turn it off when I want), and eat whatever I feel like eating. There was a time when I would have traded all of these freedoms for anything, but I also finally reached a point before I met my wife at which I appreciated these freedoms, and did my best to take advantage of them. I can see being alone as lonely, or I can see being alone as enjoying solitude. It’s up to me.

Loneliness is very real. It’s a very strong feeling that can be very debilitating, and it’s difficult to live with. It affects a person to the depths of his or her being, for in loneliness one sees oneself as being rejected by other people who would rather be with someone else — anyone else, we tell ourselves. Somehow we’re unacceptable, undesirable, unlovable. We have plenty of time to be alone to tell ourselves all these negative things about ourselves.

And how many people are afraid to leave destructive relationships or marriages because they’re afraid of being alone?

In hindsight, one of the most tragic things about my loneliness was that much of it was caused by my fear of rejection. I’ve learned when I was moving away or when someone else was leaving that they really wished they could have spent more time with me. But I never picked up the phone to say “Hey, let’s get together” because I was afraid that they would say no. My loneliness was bad, but it was worse when I was spending time alone after being rejected. But much of my loneliness, I now know, could have been averted by a simple phone call now and then. I could have gone hiking, could have gone to movies, could have had more people over for dinner, could have done a lot of things with lots of people. Instead, I sat home alone.

And by calling someone else, I might even have helped them feel less lonely.

Jesus went to the desert for forty days in order to be alone. Most of our great spiritual leaders make sure that they have plenty of time in their lives to be alone. Our time alone is very important to us — if we give it a chance and try to recognize the lessons that it’s trying to teach us. It’s up to us, though, to define that time — is it loneliness, or is it solitude? How we see it, how we treat it, and how we treat ourselves when we’re with it make it what it is.