The System of Solitude

I've always felt comfortable living alone. I spent many years overseas fending for myself alone, and have enjoyed every moment of it. I have to admit: I am a solitary creature and I make no apologies for it. As a matter of fact, I think, it made me a better person.

People who enjoy being alone are often labelled anti-social and selfish--implying that they have no liking nor care for other people. But if you care to observe carefully, so much of our social interaction are surprisingly self-centered. Posturing, boasting, bragging and gossiping are pretty common-place behaviour whenever two or more humans meet. The person with a ready supply of juicy gossips and scandalous rumours are often the life of a party.

You see, we socialize mostly to reaffirm ourselves: we need the acknowledgement of others. Every agreement and nod from a fellow human being feeds the ego. The ego survives by comparing itself with others. We also need others to ease the mortal pain we all carry within us--the pain of existence.

I know many people cannot stand being alone. The moment they are left alone, they feel restless and fearful. Fear that she has been left out by the rest of the world--that dreaded feeling of loss and abandonment. Lovers feel that more acutely whenever they are separated from each other. They have grown so accustomed to the presence of another individual in their lives that the act of separation is akin to a severing of physical body part. Couples are in essence emotionally con-joined twins.

I often tell my friends that being married and having a family is like taking a postgraduate degree by coursework. There's an alternate way of getting a postgraduate degree--by research. Being single and unmarried is pursuing the latter path. It is much more difficult because the course is not set for you. You have to pursue the task of perfecting your own soul yourself. And it is much more difficult because one is often blind to one's own faults.

When you have a family around you, your strengths and faults are constantly being tested. Through pain and suffering you correct yourselves, adjusting your own behaviour to accommodate or sometimes to dominate others. Through the jostling of daily social interactions, you are constantly rubbing your prickliest parts against others. Often this is a painful process. I've likened this before to pebbles in a stream. If we allow the river of karma to do its work on us, we all become enlightened pebbles in the end--like those smooth rounded pebbles you see at the bottom of a forest stream.

I understand the challenge of living life alone. I have no illusions. I have to set my own course for self-perfection. I like it that way because that is the nature of my soul. The life of a householder may be perfect and even happy for some but for me, happiness is the opportunity to experience things clearly, alone. Every experience has to be distilled by an undistracted mind. It is like trying to do a self-portrait. It is much easier to pose for someone else to paint you. Doing it yourself means realizing the self-bias that exist within, and forcing yourself to look at your blind spots, in a way that could be uncomfortable.

But solitude doesn't equate loneliness and melancholy. Every mystic and saint can attest to you that their moments of spiritual ecstasies are glimpse through intense states of solitary prayer or meditation. Solitude and its attendant angst shapes the soul from within; society sculpts it from without, through the instrument of pain.

Joy, insight and happiness, of its purest kind come through solitude. The real happiness of social life, if one thinks about it, also comes through moments of recollection. The essence of the human experience has to be extracted through a digestive system of solitude. Without it, the soul simply ceases to grow.