SERMON: Loneliness and Solitude

Today I want us to reflect on the experience of being alone.

As human beings, in general, we are only rarely alone. The story of the evolution of humankind is the story of human society evolving. We have evolved in groups. Our very survival depends on our culture – our shared ways of thinking, understanding, believing, working, creating, communicating. We are primates, and all primates are social creatures. We need each other to survive.

Having said that, of course, we recognize that different cultures separate people and bring them together in different ways.

Our own culture emphasizes the virtues of individualism and privacy.

In other cultures, being alone is undesirable, almost unthinkable. When I was doing anthropological fieldwork in Belize, I rented a house of my own, and people were mystified. The mosquito population of the village made it necessary for all of us to close our doors and windows tight at dusk for protection. People would offer to lend me one of their children to keep me company during the evening and night. “Don’t you get lonely there all by yourself?” they would ask. How could I explain to them how much I looked forward to those precious hours after the doors and windows were shut, when I would light my two kerosene lamps and it was just me and my books, my notes, my letters. I was alone, but I was definitely NOT lonely.

Anthropologically speaking, there are some very real differences between the experience of people who are raised in constant contact with others and those, like us, who begin to get used to being alone from a very young age. A child in Belize starts off sleeping in the same bed with her parents, later moving to a bed shared with one or two older siblings. There may be several such beds in a single room. The walls between rooms often reach neither floor nor ceiling, and they are paper thin. I remember a young girl there who – obviously experiencing deep sadness – told me how lonely she was now that she and her husband and baby had moved into their own house. She desperately missed her mother and father and all her brothers and sisters. Her house was almost a hundred yards away from her mother’s house, with at least three other houses of other relatives in between! When people in Belize are truly alone – in a house at the end of the village, say, after the children have gone to sleep and the husband is away on some business – they are very afraid. And they see things. One woman told me about seeing the noch hoch tat (the owner of the bush) on such an occasion, and about how truly terrified she was.

In a culture like ours, we begin to sleep alone within days of our birth. A baby has his own bed, his own room. We learn mental self-discipline so that we don’t see any scary things, and we learn it early. We learn to like our privacy.

We also learn to get along with others and we learn the pleasures of social companionship. But there are always times when we get sick of one another. When we want nothing more than for everybody to just go away and “LEAVE ME ALONE!!” We are tired of other people telling us what to wear, what to eat, how to talk, how to think. We just want to be left alone. So we take some time apart. Some time for ourselves. Some time alone.

Well, almost. Physically we may be alone. But most often, when we take that time for ourselves, we turn on the TV or put a movie in the DVD player, or turn on the radio or a CD or read a book or magazine. That’s not really being alone… A real difference between this electronic or printed “company” and being with our family, or friends or the crowds at the mall, is that with the electronic company, if we don’t like what we’re hearing or seeing, we can change channels. Or put in a different CD. Or pick up a different book. Or hit the power button. Close the book and put it on the shelf.

Now we’re alone. Not just taking time FOR ourselves, but taking time BY ourselves. Now what do we do? Why do we have to DO anything? But our culture teaches us that we have to stay busy. The closest most of us come to doing nothing is taking a walk. That’s good. (But what’s going on in your head while you do it?) Usually, if we don’t have anything to DO, and there’s nobody around? … That’s when we start feeling lonely. Phone a friend. Go somewhere to be with people.

Then we’re back to square one. Back in the thick of our social life… until we again hit that point where we scream “LEAVE ME ALONE.”

So one experience of being alone is this sort of normal cycle of moving in and out of the social stream. We seem to get caught in a loop. Being sociable, wanting time alone, feeling lonely, getting back to the social crowd, until we get fed up, want time alone, and go off by ourselves… until we feel lonely.

There are episodes in our lives when we feel exceptionally lonely – much more lonely than just the phase of moving in and out of the social whirl. Going away to college. Moving to a new town. When the kids start school. When they move out of the house. Divorce. A fight with a friend. A death of someone we’re close to. All of these produce a special kind of loneliness, an acute feeling of abandonment and isolation.

We can even feel very alone – very lonely – in the middle of a crowd. When we feel like nobody understands us, nobody notices us, nobody knows who we really are. Nobody cares.

If loneliness is so painful, maybe we human beings aren’t really meant to be alone, except just once in a while to get a little peace and quiet. Revive ourselves, restore our equilibrium.

If that’s the case, then why do most of the world’s religions recognize such value and virtue in solitude? And how is solitude different from loneliness, anyway?

Before Jesus began his ministry, he withdrew into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights (which was just a Hebrew way of saying “a really long time”). Before his betrayal and crucifixion, he once again withdrew into the garden of Gethsemane, and even his closest disciples, although they were present, were not really with him. He was alone.

The Buddha withdrew from society, too, and he finally achieved enlightenment in perfect solitude, sitting alone under the Bodhi tree.

The histories of the world’s religions are filled with the stories of solitary seekers – hermits, retreatants, those who take vows of silence. Jesus taught: go into your closet and pray in secret. Buddhists practice silent meditation.

We are encouraged to not be fearful of being alone, of feeling separate, at times, from the world around us. In the teachings of the Buddha, the Dhammapada, we find the following –
v. 205: Having tasted the sweetness of inner solitude and calmness, he who lives by the Dharma is free from fear and suffering.
v. 302: It is hard to leave the world for the life of a hermit; but just as hard to stay in the world and be a householder. To be with those who do not understand you is very hard.
v. 61: If the traveler cannot find a wise friend to go with him. Let him go on alone. It is better than having a fool for company.
v. 369: Empty your boat, seeker, and you will travel more swiftly.

I think what Jesus and the Buddha were trying to show us is that there is an aspect of life that is not easily experienced amid the noise and commotion, the habits and responsibilities of our day-to-day life. The clamor and activity of life can keep us from knowing who we are, from seeing life as it is. So maybe being alone is not just about restoring our ego. Maybe it’s about transcending ego. Solitude can settle us, like the clarity that comes to a murky pond with stillness. We can see and feel more clearly.

I met a friend recently who told me he had spent the whole summer alone, painting. I remarked that it must have been a wonderful experience. He said it had been very lonely. But as I attempted to express sympathy, he said, no – his best paintings had come out of that loneliness.

So here is what I think today, four years after the topic of loneliness and solitude first arose in my mind: Loneliness and solitude are the same thing. As long as we reject the one to embrace the other, we will never get it. We cannot reject loneliness and aspire to spend time in blissful solitude.

I think we must embrace loneliness. We must let ourselves be overcome with loneliness and vulnerability. Make ourselves totally available to loneliness until our ego is swallowed up in the vastness of it and we know – beyond any shadow of doubt – that we are not alone, that we never have been alone and never will be.

Is God alone, as Hafiz says? Or is he so fully present in the breath of all that lives – the breath, the sighs, the songs and sobs and laughter – so fully present in all that is that the very idea of loneliness fades into meaninglessness? Solitude comes when we touch our loneliness, reach through our loneliness into a bigger world. We retreat not to dissociate ourselves from others nor from our crazy world, but to connect. To fully connect and know that we are One – together, completely. Not alone. To know, in solitude, our undeniable connection with friends, family, ancestors and all the world. And to take into our social life that knowledge of loneliness that is the authentication of our awakened and mindful humanity.

OTHER RESOURCES used in the Order of Service, November 7:

Call to Worship:

A news reporter once asked Mother Theresa what she said to God when she prayed. “I don’t say anything,” Mother Theresa replied. “I just listen.” So the reporter asked what God said to her. And Mother Theresa responded: “He doesn’t say anything. He just listens.”

Hafiz: “The Quintessence of Loneliness”

Closing Words

Rumi: “Of Being Woven” (excerpt)

“This road demands courage and stamina,
yet it’s full of footprints! Who are
these companions? They are rungs
in your ladder. Use them!
With company you quicken your ascent.
You may be happy enough going alone,
But with others you’ll get farther, and faster.
…
Every prophet sought out companions.
A wall standing alone is useless,
But put three or four walls together,
And they’ll support a roof and keep
The grain dry and safe.
When ink joins with a pen, then the blank paper
Can say something. Rushes and reeds must be woven
To be useful as a mat. If they weren’t interlaced,
The wind would blow them away.
Like that God paired up
Creatures, and gave them friendship.”