Solitude is essential to creation, to exalting the genius; to digging deep within ourselves and finding the light that guides our work.
Being alone with our thoughts is essential, yet aloneness and loneliness are two completely different beasts.
Loneliness can kill, while aloneness leads to the opposite.
Often society has a difficult time with the idea that being alone is not always a bad thing.
The pre-conceived notion is that if one is alone, one must be sad and that simply isn’t true!
Meditation, for example, leads us to that place of peace, of stillness where ideas can proliferate, and result in an explosion of possibilities.
Creating that uncontrollable urge to get to the studio and down to work, and here again, words are not required, as we know, in our silence, what to do.
As with love, creating is like a dance filled with mystery and wonder.
This is our world.
Of course there are other personality types who require more contact, and thrive on social networks, in order to replenish their energy.
While it is hard for us to understand this fully, we don’t condemn it.
To each their own.
People are often hostile or afraid of anything that is out of their comfort zone.
It’s the old paradigm of confusion leading to fear leading to contempt.
There is so much insecurity in our society today. We are fragile beings.
Often we simply cannot bear to spend a moment alone with ourselves, with our thoughts, in our world.
Could it be that we suffer from low self-esteem and therefore cannot face to be alone?
Why must we let our ghosts win?
Perhaps if we befriended them we might overcome some of our suffering.
Is it that our society fears solitude and projects those fears onto others?
Solitude is not a mere eccentricity to be criticised and chastised; it is an art form.
The introvert in his struggle to create is better versed in stillness.
Sometimes I wonder though, if he isn’t simply more jaded, knowing full well that the extrovert’s obsessive accumulation of social networking isn’t really a viable insurance policy at all.
Is this ‘fear’ speaking?
Ultimately, we could not be the artists that we are if we limited our existence to the voices that carry and nurture fear, because solitude, silence and stillness carry much deeper meaning and for this we are eternally grateful.
Written by Boky Hackel