ON SOLITUDE

 Solitude = a simple word with a heavy meaning. 

One can be tempted to confuse solitude with solace. Think of solace as a feeling of comfort especially when distressed with something - a warm balm over a fresh wound, and solitude as a condition or an environment. It's being alone both physically and mentally.

Solitude is hanging out with yourself, enjoying your own company, making acquaintances with your wildest thoughts, understanding, sometimes reluctantly, that your company is all you'll ever own. 

The thought of spending time with yourself is both scary and unimaginable, and I won't blame you for thinking that. Existing with your own thoughts means that you will have to think, ponder your emptiness of imagination or get in too deep and suddenly you can't find your way out. That mental distress is like forcing oil to make a deal with fire - making it believe that the fire won't consume it.

Bertrand Russel said, "Most people would rather die than think, in fact, most do." Such a hauntingly beautiful statement, isn't it? 

When was the last time you just sat down in an empty room, spent time with yourself, unmuted your thoughts, explored all trails that your thoughts followed, and still managed to finish that session without dozing off or distracting yourself? And I don't mean thinking of a solution when you have propelled yourself into some sort of a predicament. Probably never, I presume. 

The reason why I hold solitude in such a high regard is because in a way, solitude prepares us for our deaths. Such a hasty conclusion I know, but stay with me. 

Try to imagine yourself dead, dead in the sense that you can feel everything going on around you, but you can't talk, you can't see, and you can't hear anything. In a way, the outside world is muted, dead - the only thing alive is your thoughts. You are in a dark room which is your mind, and the more you connect your webs of thoughts together, the lighter the room becomes. Any shortened thought or a thought with no real connection from the one before it causes the room to darken, though I don't know if such an analogy exists - once we have reached a certain level of darkness, can it get any darker? Perhaps it can, but can our eyes perceive it? That's beside the point.

So, basically, when you retreat to a room and explore your thoughts in silence, you are simply preparing yourself for the boring reality of death. Solitude is a weapon if used properly. Here's how: what exactly is the extent of things that we can own? Property, children, vehicles? I don't have to go any further, let me spoil it for you - the only thing that we can own without paying for it dearly either when acquiring it or losing it is ourselves. When you acquired 'yourself' - through birth, you didn't pay anything because you just found yourself. When you'll be losing yourself - through death, you won't feel any loss because you'd be dead already. 

A story is told of a king who had lost his kingdom, wife, children, and servants. He was then taken to another kingdom by the other king. After a while, he was allowed to return to his kingdom, only that the kingdom wasn't his anymore. While at the dock, someone called to him, "Hey, have you lost anything of yours?" He answered, "No, I haven't lost anything of mine." 

Was he right? Of course he was. His wife, children, kingdom, servants - none of those were his in the sense that you and I think. His answer would have been quite different if his legs or hands were amputated. So, your parents, your dog, your house, your cars - you don't own any of those things, you certainly think you do, but you don't. 

If I truly own something, then it can't be taken away from me. My imagination, my thoughts, my intelligence - I can never lose them. Sure, I can use loads of drugs and distort their functionality but that's not losing them. With advancements in artificial intelligence, future aristocrats will control our thoughts using chips and the likes, so maybe then will we lose those 'things.' At the moment though, we can't lose them. One can also argue that in the event that we lose such things, we won't feel the same kind of sting we usually feel when we lose physical things that are separate from our body, think cars, family, and the likes. 

My remedy for not digging ourselves into that deceitful hole of ignorance is by being aware of what we own and what we don't. Let's become like that king who understood that all the things he had supposedly lost weren't his to own in the first place. 

Here's where we can start, according to Michel de Montaigne: set apart a room at the back of your house, with nothing in it apart from a pen and paper. Retreat to that safe dungeon every day for your own session. Sit there quietly, dangle with your thoughts - which shouldn't be of things you think you own. They should be thoughts of yourself, your life, your death. You do that long enough, and soon you will look at things with a sense of detachment that nobody will ever understand. You will lose people, friends, wealth, and still feel like before - it'll be the perfect embodiment of walking into a fire and emerging on the other side, unscathed. 

You will learn to treat the other imposter, Triumph, just the same way you treated its counterpart, Disaster - with a high level of indifference, like Rudyard Kipling advised. If you don't care about losing what you think you own, would gaining it affect you any more than losing it? Probably not. We only lose our minds over things that we have lost because we were over the moon when we gained them. 

Solitude is the answer to all of our problems - perhaps not, that is another hasty conclusion. But we will be better than all the others scavenging through opportunities, looking for success, and then losing it, and losing their sanity and composure while at it. 

If we can lose everything around us, why not cement our identities on things that can't be lost?