Solitude (Excerpt from "The Single Issue" by Al Hsu)

Hi guys, I just thought i'd share this wonderful excerpt from this book that i'm currently reading. It's a wonderful article regarding solitude vs loneliness. As you can see from the title - this is a book regarding singleness. Being single can mean that you get to spend more time at home by yourself while others are with their families/friends, etc. I guess this article was very helpful to me in the past (when i first read the book) and I would like to share this now so that it can be a blessing to you too. Njoy:

The discipline of solitude

After college, where I was used to having people around all the time and living with other people, it was something of a shock to start living by myself. Unless I turned on the stereo or TV, it was quiet. I could actually spend an entire day by myself without speaking a word to anyone. It was very odd to sit alone at home by myself on a Friday night with nothing to do.

But gradually I came to realize the benefits of living alone. I was no longer frustrated with the conflicts that naturally come from living with other people. If there were dishes in the sink, they were my dishes. if the bathroom or bedroom was messy, it was my mess.

More significantly, I discovered, that I didn't need to go out every weekend and do something social. I could spend a relaxing evening at home on a Saturday night and read a book. I gradually came to realize that I could be alone without feeling insecure, awkward, or lonely. And rather than experiencing God only through fellowship with the body, I could meet with Him in the quiteness of my empty flat. In short, I was discovering solitude.

Solitude can be a misleading term, so we must define what it is and what it is not. Solitude is not just avoiding other people. It is difficult in our modern society to escape the hustle and bustle of rush -hour traffic jams, answering machines, deadlines, committee meetings, itineraries and schedules. But getting away from it all is not in itself solitude, because often when we leave behind one form of busyness we simply exchange it for another. We all know how holidays can actually be more draining than the daily grind.

Also, solitude does not mean escaping from the world. The late Henry Nouwen writes that when most of us think of solitude, we call to mind pictures of reclusive monks or hermits living in deserts and forests, far away from the rest of the world. But neither is this, by itself, solitude.

Nouwen makes a critical distinction between solitude and privacy. Privacy, he says, is constructed as some sort of commodity, a 'spiritual property' to which we feel entitled, as when we speak of a 'right to privacy'. In this sense, we think of solitude as 'a station where we can recharge our batteries, or as the corner of the boxing ring where our wounds are oiled, our muscles massaged and our courage restored by fitting slogans'. In other words, our privacy-based concept of solitude is nothing more than 'a place where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition in life'.

This concept is very different from the spiritual discipline of solitude. Nouwen says that true solitude is 'not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is the place of conversion, the palce where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs.' Such a solitude is internal; 'The solitude that really counts is the solitude of the heart; it is an inner quality or attitude that does not depend on physical isolation'.

Solitude accomplishes a transformation of our loneliness. 'Jesus calls us from loneliness to solitude,' Richard Foster writes. 'Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfilment.' Solitude is not just being alone; it is being alone with God. Because God is transcendent and omnipresent, he is always with us. But we must consciously apprehend his presence before we enter into solitude. Otherwise we are just alone with ourselves and our thoughts.

....Furthermore, when we are in solitude, we come to grips with our own humanity and fallenness. Nouwen writes of the early church desert fathers who fled into the wilderness to escape the evils of society, only to discover that through their aloneness, God showed them the depthss of their own sins. Nouwen describes his own experience:

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meeetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken - nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.

Foster writes: 'If we possess inward solitude we do not fear being alone, for we know that we are not alone.' God is with us always, and our being alone does not and cannot change His love and concern for us. The discipline of solitude helps us to recognise this fact.

But solitude does not stop there. Solitude actually creates in us a greater appreciation for community, because when we are alone, we recognize our won humanity, our own fallings.

In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us, that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice, cruelty, hatred, jealousy and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart. in solitude our heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh, a rebellious heart into a contrite heart, and a closed heart into a heart that can open itself to all suffering people in a gesture of solidarity.

Such self-understanding creates in us greater compassion for others. Strangers no longer seem as distant, because we perceive them as people who face the struggles of life just as we do. Then we begin to desire relationship and connectedness, for we desire to draw others out of their loneliness and pain and to share with them the fulfilment we have found by encountering God in our solitude. 'Thus', Nouwen writes,'in and through solitude we do not move away form people. On the contrary, we move closer to them through compassionate ministry.'

Hope i'm not breaching copyright by writing such a big chunk. I do hope that this article is somewhat helpful for you - whatever it is that you are going through at the moment.