No, I’m not feeling the pangs of existential desolation. I have been reading about Nietzsche this morning, in The Real Face of Atheism—highly recommended—but I was thinking about this topic before I encountered poor mad, brilliant Frederick.
Loneliness seems to be a hallmark of our culture. Our insulating technology (“instant messages” are not conversations!) makes seclusion gravitational, and earnest, face-to-face friendships rarer that ever. Even if we didn’t live in a fiercely individualistic society, it would be hard to defy the electronic siren call of “effortless” relationship (condolences sent via email, celeb “friends” in our living rooms, talk show hosts masquerading as our pals…). It’s never been easy, but today, really knowing someone is a harder task than ever. And so, as often as not, we go it alone. America is a lonely nation.
Just the same, I can’t help wondering if isolation is a hallmark of all cultures, even a fundamental fact of existence. Thomas Wolfe seemed to think so. As he wrote in “God’s Lonely Man” (titled appropriately enough): The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that the sense of loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon peculiar to myself and a few other solitary people, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. All this hideous doubt, despair, and dark confusion of the soul a lonely person must know, for he is united to no image save that which he creates himself.
This loneliness, which Wolfe describes so devastatingly, is a mindset, a frame of heart, which transcends physicality and conditions. Who hasn’t sometimes felt the pangs of isolation strongly (even strongest) in a crowded room? There’s a closet in the human soul that defies the most well-intentioned sharing.
It’s like trying to describe a rare moment—say a windswept April sunset, wreathed in scents of forsythia—to someone who wasn’t there. A moment we cannot fully share, like a room we can only enter alone, leaves us unavoidable lonesome. We crouch singly in our souls. Others may peer in the windows, we may send out mail, but who else can cross the threshold? In a sense we cannot help but be lonely.
In that sense, we may be surrounded by ever so many friends, even good friends, and married, happily married, and still feel, at times, abandoned. The question seems to be not so much, “Is it possible, in our crowded, rushing society, for someone to be really alone?” as “Is it possible for someone not to be?”
Small echoes of resonant “proof” fortify my suspicions.
As a kid I watched a movie, now obsolete, entitled The Young Sherlock Holmes, an attempted prequel to Doyle’s stories. The film tried to imaginatively foreshadow the trajectory of Holmes' adult life; throughout the script, his byword is, “I never want to be alone.” In the end though, of course, he is—left inconsolable alone, his love interest dead, with only his work to divert his grief. And, remarkably enough, he is alone throughout the movie as well, even while his love still lives. So young Holmes emerges as a tragic hero. No one can never be alone. A semi-profound premise for a children’s movie.
I remember, wistfully, the telling line in Tolkien’s story: “To bear a ring of power is to be alone.” Poor Frodo. Until he sails West, he is fated for soul-isolation. Even the devoted Sam can only infer his misery. As usual, Tolkien simply tells the truth, cloaked in mythic hyperbole.
Former Waterdeep frontman Don Chaffer sings: Most folks smile away the blues
I mean I…I guess they do
You never really know for sure
But I’m surviving on this hunch
That everybody else is hurtin’ too.
Centuries ago, a scholar captured it in his book: “The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share its joy” (Proverbs 14:10).
And further instances, of course, literally pervade our culture. If I stopped here, I’d seem to be making a case for prolonged depression. Actually, that’s not my intent. Eyeing our natural predicament makes the solution all the more lucid and bright.
Simple logic suggests a human soul may only be known completely by the one who indwells it. And so far this seems to suggest that only I, Ariel, will ever know the full inner life of aforesaid young man (writer, thinker, basketball player extraordinaire…). This would be a cause for forlorn musings. And for many it is.
But, as W.H. Auden would assure us, Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,
Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,
Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh
There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
Question: If my soul, simply by virtue of being mine, defies attempts at full comprehension, what hope is there for intimacy? In a world of endless searching, what hope is there of being found?
Answer, framed strikingly by David, the warrior-poet-king:You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, The days of my life all prepared before I'd even lived one day…Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed underground, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. (Psalm 139)
Thomas Wolfe was wrong, in thinking loneliness has no recourse. So was Nietzsche. There is an antidote for earth-bound "isolation." The God who made a soul can also enter it, speak to it, know it…inside and out.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
To Be Alone
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11 comments:
Right on, Nate. The "God-shaped vacuum" Pascal described will always make itself felt, all the more acutely if it is not filled. Human nature, too, hates a vacuum.
When it's a soul-vacuum, the emptiness can be unbearable.
I had a kitty-shaped vacuum, but that's been filled now.
Enjoying your posts, photography and poetry. But I've eaten too much turkey and pie and made too much small talk today to try to absorb heavy thoughts of loneliness.
Norma
http://churchacronym.blogspot.com
Hey, I just stumbled across this blog, looks promising.
Say, you're from kansas and your name is Ariel I wonder if perhaps I know some people who ran into you last fall. The coincidence would be large... They were simply passing through on their way to a Feast of Tabernacles gathering... I think they layed tefillin in the forest with you or something... Ok, never mind that.
The danger of lonliness is when it becomes selfishness. Lonliness is almost a neutral feeling that arises from the innate isolation that the proverb speaks of. When it becomes a negetive thing is when we become consumed with selfishness as a result.
PD
Thanks Norma, Sphere, Paula. (I must be another Ariel, Sphere.)
I'm wondering if loneliness is something best "enjoyed" when you're not experiencing it, you know, the armchair philosopher, or whether you need to be mired in isolation to think about it seriously.
Either way, Thanksgiving is a good time NOT to think about it. Likewise Christmas, one's birthday, cat-acquisition days, etc. ;) Free passes for all.
...although I like your point, Sphere, about selfishness. Being "alone," really alone, could have positive consequences if it caused one to look outside oneself. But "lonely" introspection, self-absorption, etc.,(while seemingly a trademark of many famous artists...) is ultimately self-defeating. (Ex: Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway)
Yes. This is true. I am a walking loner. Lonely, did I ask to be lonely? No, but after so many moments in the deepest solitude I see little reason for all of the fake pretenses that must be waded through to talk to someone, all of the hurt. Yes, I am a freekin' island; and island with a heartbeat that hurts. It hurts to live, and I am questioning what the point of it all is. I am much like Holmes in that I am only left with my work as a means to relieve my grief. I am between a rock and a hard place. At times it seems as if my creator is so far away, and at others near. It is at times a grinding and unnerving and psychotic existence, but there are those rare moments of peace. I am sick of empty religion that is forced as the only way, the kind that has the truth but has not the Spirit of love to deliver it.
>>At times it seems as if my creator is so far away, and at others near...I am sick of empty religion that is forced as the only way, the kind that has the truth but has not the Spirit of love to deliver it.>>
Honesty like this has an edge to it that can't be dismissed lightly. Christ is a God nearby, "that we should seek him, so that we might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." (Acts 17:27) And yet he is sometimes hard to find in the actions of his (so-called) people.
I, likewise, haven't the time or mind to harbor empty religion. Jesus is the one we must pursue, first and foremost, before we can approach people - people who often fail to communicate Christ's truth and love. Jesus is his own best representative.
I am so thankful he allows himself to be found. For me, John 1 has always been one good place to start/restart "the pursuit"...and "the finding."
John 1, okay, that is a book that a good friend has shown me many times. THanks for your response. I heard yesterday at a lecture that we are to have a kind of marriage with him, this sort of obsession. A hot, burning, passionate, lover-like thang. He just asks us again and again, do you want this? THis burning hot, mmmmh?
Your friend is (I think) trying to communicate an aspect of Christ's love for us, but doing it in a somewhat simplistic way. Jesus does state that he is preparing the church (those who follow him) as his "bride" - but our understanding of this analogy often needs to be reversed. That is to say, we aren't to conclude that God is pining away like a love-sick adolescent (our limited understanding of "love"). Rather, our understanding of God's covenant love for us ought to be based on his definition of the word.
The love Christ has for us is enduring, sacrificial, painful (the cross) and ultimately redemptive - not sexual. Jesus is not waiting to be manipulated by us; he's no one's boyfriend/girlfriend.
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