This past week, a friend of mine confessed that she was struggling with contentment in solitude. She has spent the last month away from her college community and realized, as a result of this, just how dependent she is on other people. I responded by saying, “Life is meant to be shared.” Now this is true, but it is an incomplete statement to her situation, and I regretted it as soon as I walked away. I failed to really put myself in her shoes, and as a result, I ignored how vital solitude has been to my growth since graduating.
After college, my friends and I all spread out to different corners of the world, and while our day-to-day experiences were quite different, we all felt the same sense of isolation, exile, and disillusionment. We realized that we had been raised in a bio-dome of community of sorts, through school and college, and that fantasy-land is forever past. When we spread out, each of us were left with ourselves, and that was it.
When left with myself, I found that, in the words of St. Theophan the Recluse, I was “like a shaving of wood which is curled around its central emptiness.” I was left alone, and in that solitude, I felt empty. I had this great need for another person – just one person – to link arms with me and share my life and work with. The ironic aspect was that I had always thought of myself as independent. But I wasn’t. Most of my life had been centered around fulfilling the expectations of others, and exile was necessary for me to see that emptiness and learn who I truly was, separate from what I did and what others said of me. There were no more tests to pass, no more friends to help, no more sermons to preach, no more praise to receive.
I experienced a lot of loneliness in that first year, but if I could turn back time and trade the solitude I experienced after college for a full and constant swirl of friends and activity… I wouldn’t. We were made for community, but we need solitude in our life to confront our own emptiness. It is in our emptiness, our desperation, that we are filled with the Spirit. Therefore, let us accept solitude so that when we do share our lives with others, it is a life worth sharing. “Life is meant to be shared, but if God has you in a time of solitude, accept it as an opportunity to gaze inward and face the emptiness. When you return to your community, it will be more satisfying than ever before.” I wish that is what I had told my friend.
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