On the Virtues of Loneliness and Solitude

“Solitude and loneliness are two distinct states, not to be confused one with the other…Loneliness implies discontent, a feeling of deprivation, a yearning for company, a frustrated dependence on other human beings, tension.”
– Frank Mulville, Single-handed Sailing

But isn’t sailing by yourself lonely?

I often want to reply, “I feel the loneliest when I am on the train, surrounded by people staring into those little black screens, devoid of anything to catch my eye, while an indescribably terrible, screeching wail of weak political will drowns out any connection I dare attempt”. But I think the question beneath the question is, “Why would you put yourself in such a vulnerable position, and how much fun could you be having alone?” And to this I have to distinguish between being lonely, being alone and being in solitude.

Single-handing may becoming even more strange in a culture that is obsessed with being “connected” at all moments- and, it should surprise no one, has off the charts anxiety and depression (and a rage and hopelessness that is so neurotic as to want a more codependent relationship with government).  And so if I am talking to someone and they are asking me this question, they most likely have been infected with the FOMO virus, and so  I usually will say no, I am not lonely, even though the truth is YES YES YES. But to properly explain I need more time than is usually allowed in a polite social situation.

I was in a psychology workshop recently where an excellent and squarely anti-loneliness facilitator (the psychology set are squarely a pro-social bunch) asked me, “And with the way you have set things up for yourself, aren’t you lonely?”  The way the word rolled off her tongue and the crowd responded, I realized I was trapped.  I knew that a “Yes, but…” was just going to sound like a defense or an excuse, some lie I was telling myself and so I just stood there, somewhat like I had been caught red-handed and no amount of decrying my innocence was going to make a difference. When she asked me this, I didn’t know how to answer, I became confused and felt misunderstood and a little humiliated. I became an outlaw in the room, one of the losers, and no reference to Soren Kierkegaard or Annie Dillard was going to cut it. So, if you think loneliness is a bad thing, you are in good company and can cross single-handing off your list but know that you are missing something.

My loneliness is the worst from the moment I decide to go sailing until the moment I cast off the lines. Often the experience is all but unbearable and I try and rack my brain to think who might be nearby or want to go- I’ve probably invited everyone I know at one point or another. Sometimes, I get my wish and I then have a lovely afternoon chatting and talking (occasionally this has led to getting bossed around by a sailor intent on showing off, ugh please stop yanking on my furling line, thank you). I love going out in good weather with friends. But… somehow this isn’t what I would call sailing as I have come to know it. Sailing is what happens when I can abide that loneliness, let it take me over and bring me to my knees. When a thousand clawing voices can give me a hundred thousand reasons to put it off or wait until tomorrow or tell me that I don’t have the skills, time, etc. It’s when I am awkwardly standing there, like the kid still waiting to get picked for dodgeball, pretending to fuss with something, feeling terribly, horribly alone and abandoned by the world and inside I am crawling into a small cabinet or running away and never looking back and outside I am slowly undoing the lines, disconnecting the shore power, and raising the main. Because when I do that I am pushing against my upbringing, my gender training, my self image, and my stories.

See, I have these stories about myself that haunt me whenever I try and do something alone but especially sailing. I know different people have different flavors of stories that hold them back in life, and mine are usually around ineptitude. Sometimes that story is that someone else is going to make things okay for me or has a special answer or special knowledge or that they are going to make the experience better somehow or that I will be happier with them. My go-to story that creates loneliness is that I somehow fundamentally lack the ability or the secret knowledge required and because of this I am putting myself in a very dangerous or very foolish situation. This story means that the answers I need are outside of myself. They are just beyond my grasp- at the next workshop or training or book or some wondrous tool I don’t have (like hydraulic bold cutters!). Last year I flew halfway around the world in hopes of finding a good teacher only to receive a very clear message that the time has come that I need to start looking inside of myself.

I relayed this story from the workshop to a group of therapists that work with the dharma.  My dharma teacher’s lips curled at the edges of his mouth and he broke out into a wild grin as he asked, “Did you tell her that you eat loneliness for breakfast and then you have some more for lunch!?” Because in this small circle, the point is liberation. If I don’t have to run from my loneliness, don’t have to build walls or find lovers or have children or keep myself very small in relationships  just to keep out of its reaches, if I can bear the fear and the horror and the various hobgoblins of my mind, then I have a chance at real freedom, authenticity, and to make choices for myself from a good place inside. I have a chance to actually see someone for who they are rather than what they can do for me. I can get off the couch and try and fail and do it again and learn something. It took me a few weeks to find the words I wanted to say: “I am alone when I read or sail or work on the boat or walk through the neighborhood with the dogs in tow or fall asleep alone in the dark but these are my hard-won accomplishments that I am so happy about. Maybe I am sometimes lonely, but who cares? I have won the right to live my life as I have dreamed of it to be” (and I’m rarely ever alone for that matter).

From a dharma perspective, when I avoid my own loneliness, I am avoiding myself and if I can’t bear myself, I can’t possibly be available to anyone else in any real way. If I can tolerate these clawing ghosts, I am having an experience of myself, I am in a process of becoming. I am in my me-ness and I can get a look at who this person inside really is, what scares her and a thousand other things I’d have no other way of knowing and with all that information I have chance at changing her experience and broadening her possibilities. I also have a chance at empathizing with someone else and can look them squarely in the eye when I ask them to confront their own hobgoblins in the therapy room. In sailing terms, I have plenty of butyl tape and it time for me to start bedding my own screws. So this kind of loneliness is the kind I need. Otherwise, I am trapped with my ghosts and stories and outmoded ways of thinking and need to stay home and practice being pretty.

The other thing about the loneliness is that once I untie that second line and start walking the boat back, it disappears as if never there in the first place. Now I am trying to get her to pivot ninety degrees without the bowsprit running into the piling and jump on in time to sheet in the main before she’s blown onto the boats parked behind her. Then it’s pointing her up, unfurling the jib and tacking out while pulling up the fenders, lest anyone from the yacht club be watching. I’m looking for traffic, now remembering that I ought to have checked the tides so try and guess from the rocks on the break wall, choosing my entrance, and off I go. Now I am having an experience, of myself and also of the world and hours will go by and I will not notice them. I will not check the time or my phone or ever really want to come home. It is just as soon as I leave the dock that something entirely different happens. The ghosts vanish. The stories melt away in the face of experience and I am engrossed in the air, the water, the sun, sky, clouds and vibrant greens along the shore. Alone on the water I do not have an age or a gender, a job or an identity. Somehow my loneliness has transformed into a profound experience of myself. I belong to the world and anything is possible for me. I am experience responding to experience and this is exponentially more satisfying than any of the stories I create about who I am or how things are supposed to go or what someone could possibly do to improve upon the world as she is. I notice for the first time that the stories are exhausting and so heavy to carry, I am surprised every time at how pleasurable and convenient it is to be free of them. I feel an immense relief and excitement that I am working with myself, mano a mano, and in that struggle the improbable possibilities for myself are manifest before my eyes. I am defying the gods and the goblins and it feels like nothing sort of a small miracle that I might exist this way, in this moment.

“Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.
– Charles Bukowski, Go all the way

Some books I thought of while writing this post:

Notes from the Underground by Theodore Dostoevsky

Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire by Charles Bukowski

Pilgrim at Tinkering Creek by Annie Dillard

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

Games People Play by Eric Berne

Why Good People Do Bad Things by James Hollis