“It is better to suffer from loneliness than to suffer from sin.”
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef
Category: LONELINESS & SOLITUDE
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“He [Walter Benjamin] both craved solitude and complained of loneliness; he often sought community, sometimes working to create it himself, but was just as often loath to commit himself to any group…………
He renounced comfort, security, and honors in order to maintain intellectual freedom and the time and space to read, think and write.”
― Howard Eiland, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life
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Solitude appeared to me as the only fit state of man.
―Walter Benjamin -
Unlike solitude, loneliness is not merely the experience of aloneness. It is a feeling of a gap between oneself and others, the perception of an active, living, aching separation that the lonely person wishes were otherwise.
Struth’s unpeopled photos evoke the loneliness of urban life -
I am speaking of the selfishness of good people, devout people, those who have succeeded through spiritual exercises and self-denial in being able to make the proud profession before the altar of the Most High, “Lord, I am not like the rest of men.” Yes, we have had the audacity at certain times of our lives to believe we are different from other men. And here is the deepest form of self-deception, dictated by self-centeredness at its worst: spiritual egotism. This most insidious form of egotism even uses piety and prayer for its own gain.
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There is no limit to such self-deception. And the path, once entered upon, is so slippery that God has to treat us harshly to bring us back to our senses. But there is no other way of opening our eyes. It has to be painful. But often it isn’t enough. Disaster, illness, disappointment hover like birds of prey over the poor carcass that had the temerity to say, “Lord, I am not like the rest of men.” How can we possibly entertain the idea that we are different from other men, when we shout, cry, feel afraid, lack determination, and behave atrociously just like everybody else?
Letters from the Desert
by Carlo Carretto
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An intelligent person might feel lonely… or tend to be lonely…
Maybe because he does not benefit much from people… or because he does not like the way they act… or does not find a match to his friendship.
The philosopher Diogenes is a clear example: he was seen carrying a lamp during the daytime, and when asked the reason, he said, “I am searching for a person!”
Thus an intelligent person could fall in pride too…
Either due to his continual success, or by people’s talk about his brilliant deeds, or feeling superior when compared to others… Generally, the virtue of humility on the part of those who are intelligent needs a greater effort…
Here, someone might ask this intelligent question: why doesn’t the intelligent person discover these faults, through his intelligence, and avoid them?
The answer is that he might discover his faults, but to avoid them is another point. There is a difference between the intellectual and spiritual, between the mind and soul.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. 1 -
But since social relations are always ambiguous, since my thoughts divide as much as unite, and my words unite by what they express and isolate by what they omit, since a wide gulf separates my subjective certainty of myself from the objective truth others have of me, since I constantly end up guilty, even though I feel innocent, since every event changes my daily life, since I always fail to communicate, to understand, to love and be loved, and every failure deepens my solitude, since…
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)
Jean-Luc Godard -
Learning the difference between needing solitude and craving the safety of keeping others at arms length can point us toward what we might actually need. Learning the difference between loving alone time and feeling more comfortable not letting others in can point us toward where our practice might be. Learning the difference between honoring our introverted-ness and not wanting to do the vulnerable work of cultivating healthy relationships can point us toward both the wound and the answer. This has been a lifelong note to self.
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This was like a running theme of his life. He had no place he had to go to, no place to come back to. He never did, and he didn’t now. The only place for him was where he was now.
Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
SO GOOD QUOTES 