On Solitude

And the Hidden Nature of Introverts

A picture I took in the Rocky Mountains some years ago

I have a funny relationship with myself.

Well that’s a stupid first sentence. Honestly, I can’t imagine a stupider way to begin a piece of writing.

“I have a funny relationship with myself?”

Everybody has a funny relationship with themselves.

Very profound, really. Someone should give you an award.

If you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic. You sound like an idiot who just discovered how to masturbate and thinks he’s stumbled upon the meaning of life.

Well you have to start somewhere, don’t you? Try to be fucking patient. I’m obviously getting to a point. If you would just give me a goddamn second to breathe maybe we could get there.

And I’m not talking about masturbating at all. I don’t know why you would make such an assumption.

Anyway,

Anyway.

I have a funny relationship with myself.

And here you go again.

Shut up.

Fuck you.

You see, I have spent a whole lot of time alone.

Yeah, it’s been a blast.

And it’s been very intentional. With precious few exceptions, I feel much less alone when by myself than in the company of other human beings.

At least there’s one thing we agree on.

I really do. My entire brain operates differently when I’m by myself. In many ways, there is more of me when I’m alone. It is the only time that I’m truly comfortable. The only time when I can truly breathe.

Before my current partner, I lived alone, traveled and wandered alone, moved alone, spent almost all of my free time alone.

In those days, I had a social job in the center of a vibrant and very small community. I was surrounded by a bunch of very special people who were as weird as myself (which is really saying something) and I felt a deep sense of belonging.

I loved it there. I would get to work, exhausted from another sleepless night of insomnia and on-going mental health issues, and within the first few minutes of almost every day, I would be swept up in the chaotic species of small-town-drama-fun which that place operated on. It was an environment and group of people that brought out a deeply out-going side of myself that I don’t see much of the time. A side that I quite liked and that I really haven’t been able to find again in years.

I had fun days there, but as a deeply introverted person, they would drain me intensely. I would get off work and not want to see another human being until I had to return back the next morning.

That kind of balance worked for me. I would spend most evenings alone in the woods or by a River or Pond, catching up with myself and with the Earth. During that time, I was existing in a wavelength that was working for me. I had consistent contact with my own Center, which can only happen when I have both community and a lot of solitude.

It was a time of significant spiritual growth, which I have found, for myself at least, is intrinsically tied to solitude in places far from human development.

After my peaceful evenings with the Trees, I would go home to whatever cheap, shitty apartment I was currently renting to make dinner and I would have thoughtful, introspective evenings to myself that I quite enjoyed.

During that period of my life, I made the mistake of trying to have roommates once or twice. I have discovered that it takes about two weeks of trying to live with someone before I realize that I despise them and our entire friendship is ruined right along with any precarious semblance of mental health I may have been holding onto.

I have discovered that when I try to live with someone, I am never for one single moment comfortable in my own home. I don’t even recognize my brain as my own when I’m sharing a living space with someone. It’s almost as though I start to panic as soon as I come home and see there is someone else in my space, as though I wasn’t expecting them to be there. Whatever I was previously thinking about or intending to do immediately dissolves and there is a kind of anxious numbing that washes over me.

All of a sudden, I turn into an (even more) insane person who has not a single clue of what I’m doing in the world.

Oh shit. They’re in the kitchen. Shit-goddamnit-fuck why are they in my kitchen?! What do I do? I was going to go in the kitchen. I just bought this ice cream and I need to put it in the freezer but I can’t put it in the freezer not when someone is in my fucking kitchen. I guess I’ll just stand here and pretend to yawn. Why are you pretending to yawn? That’s so weird. You feel so awkward with someone else in your space and you don’t know what you should be saying or doing so you pretend you need to yawn and you think that will somehow ease the tension within you and in this room? Yep that did it. Good job. Everyone feels less awkward now because you stood there and pretended to have a long, drawn-out yawn. I’m sweating now. I’m fucking sweating because I am so angry. I’m so angry that there’s someone in my kitchen. I’m angry and I’m sweating and I want to cry and scream at the same time but I feel too dead inside to do either. Not to mention how psychotic that would make you look. If you don’t want to be noticed by your roommate now, try seeing how they react to you walking in the door and immediately falling into a heap of tears and sweat and shrieks just from the sight of them in your kitchen. I was going to make food and eat but that plan can go straight to hell. I don’t want them seeing me eat. I don’t want them hearing me eat. I hate hearing them eat so they must hate hearing me eat just as much. It’s simple logic. I can’t fucking eat around anyone and they should know that. Yeah. They’re so inconsiderate. They’re doing it just to spite you I swear to god. I can tell. Well what do I do now? I really don’t know. I guess I’ll just go sit on the couch. I will sit on the couch in silence and stare off because I am so fucking uncomfortable with this fucking persons’ presence in my house. Should you smile? I’m already smiling dumbass. Why are you smiling? No one said anything funny or even said anything to you at all so why are you just standing there like an idiot with melting ice cream in your hand nervously smiling to yourself for no reason? They’re looking now. They’re looking at me and I don’t know what to do. Are they wondering why I’m smiling? Of course they are. They must think I’m happy or something. Well, that’s laughable. Maybe I should pretend to yawn agai- Look down! Quick just look down at the goddamn floor. Maybe if you look down they’ll stop looking at you. They’ll stop noticing and maybe they’ll just go away and leave you alone. Pretend there’s something really interesting down there. They’ll just go away and leave and you can go lie down and soak in a puddle of your own existential angst for the next five hours to deal with the stress of coming home to find someone in your kitchen.

In other words, I’m really not much of a roommate. The very few times I have tried, it was followed by a quick deterioration of my quality of life and mental health. Not to mention the friendships involved.

I need my space.

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I have encountered quite a few people in my life who love to assume things about introverts. Love to assume things like they are antisocial, or even worse, pity them because they feel their missing out on something.

Any introverted person will tell you though - if they’ve had enough time alone lately and have the capacity for conversation, that is - that these are dramatically false accusations.

There is a deep and profound sort of peace and personal understanding that comes with time spent alone. I would never, ever trade the years that I spent by myself. For people who need that sort of time and space to connect with themselves and the world around them, it is as essential as air or water. It is not something to feel sorry for; it is a deeply enriching part of life that sharpens, accentuates, and connects all other parts of life.

It is something sacred.

We are all different. We each have unique aspects of our lives which we hold strong value to, and we each have our own dreams. Some of those dreams are more direct and easier to see and understand, even if they’re not always easy to find or achieve; finding love and partnership, starting a family, having a career, etc.

Other dreams are more obscure and difficult to define. Dreams and goals that are shrouded and mysterious even to those harboring them. Dreams that hide behind a veil, and often take the form of an enigmatic sense of yearning for something we cannot touch and that lies just out of sight. These are dreams which society does not provide a clear path to discovering.

They are in fact dreams that Western society discredits and tells its students to not waste their time on. Western society tells us that if something is not concrete, if it cannot be accomplished by going to school and then going to work, that it is not worth pursuing. Western society tells us that if it can’t be purchased, it ain’t real.

Western society is lying.

There is a place.

A place which all can find. A place that all have their own path to.

You will not be able to find directions to this place on google maps so put your goddamn phone away.

This place, the place where one may stand before the more elusive parts of being alive and catch a glimpse of something ancient and formless and infinite that is also a part of them, is a place that is found through solitude. For me, at least.

Many people say that human connection is all we have.

I disagree vehemently.

Human connection is indeed important, though it is but one branch on the Tree of things that can make life beautiful and worth living.

The times in this life that I have truly felt the least alone, the most full, and the most connected, are times that I have been far from other human beings.

Humans communicate with words and body language. These days humans communicate mostly with phones and screens.

When I am in this place of which I speak, a place which itself is constantly moving and shifting and hiding from itself, there is no need to communicate with the limitations of language, and it is certainly a place where smart-phones are the stuff of distant, fevered nightmares.

In this place, there is full understanding. And at the same time there is the knowledge that nothing needs to be understood. There is poetry on the whisper of the wind the likes of which will never be spoken by human tongue. There is a nurturing, infinite, unconditional, and often very tough kind of love that radiates from the floor of the Forest, a love that emits from Creation herself, a love which has fueled and given life to every mother that has ever loved her young more than life itself.

I am not alone when I am in these places. I am in fact, surrounded with a kind of vibrance that deeply transcends humanity.

We love to give ourselves credit for these qualities that we think of as only human. Qualities like love and passion and creativity. Though we are vastly mistaken to take ownership of them. They do not come from us; We come from them. All life comes from them.

We must remember that we are naturally occurring manifestations of the Infinite. We do not create the qualities which we embody, they simply flow through us.

This is a very profound thing to ponder. To think about one of your favorite people and try to, for a moment, look through a broader lens and stop thinking about them as them and think about them as the universe. As the embodiment and personification of pure life.

To remind oneself that your loving spouse, or maybe your crazy weird goofy best friend, or your dog or cat who seems to hold an almost supernatural sense of loyalty towards you, that any and all of these people just popped into existence from what seems to be nothing.

That they are natural manifestations of their environment, in just the same way that ferns and mushrooms are natural manifestations of the woodland environment. The Earth gives birth to them, as the Earth gave birth to you and everyone you know.

And then to go a step further and realize that your spouse or mom or goofy best friend or dog or cat or whoever is one of the faces of Nature itself. That Nature created that brilliant and hilarious and totally unique person with all of their weird quirks all on its own, and that each of us with our own totally unique psyches and ways of being came from this same place. None of us came from anywhere else, we came from nature directly and these qualities like love and creativity that we think of as human come to us, not from us.

They were always there; they just needed vehicles to deliver themselves.

We borrow these traits for a while and then we give them back. For those of you who are new to my writing, when I say us in this context, I mean all of us. Not just humans but all of us. Each plant and creature and being who shares our breathe and water and heartbeat.

If there is one overarching theme that connects everything I write, it is an attempt to help create a paradigm where humans remember how equal we are to this land and everyone that we share this realm with. How this land is equal to us. How this land is us, as we are this land. How any aspect of human “progress” that must ignore that fact in order to move forward is not progress at all, but is poison. That we are not above this land, that we do not, cannot, claim ownership of this land, and that our self-appointed place as dominators of the natural world is the result of a dangerous misconception of our own nature and is a desecration.

To remind humans that when we murder and poison this Earth and the various other inhabitants of this Earth, we are murdering and poisoning our own family. In the most literal sense.

To remind humans that, contrary to widely popular belief, we need not murder nor poison in order to eat; that there is a difference between taking something from this Earth and receiving something from this Earth. That the manufacturing of poison and the mass desensitization regarding that poison is not essential to the growing of food (imagine a world where everyone had a garden and chicken coop instead of a lawn, and there were rotating neighborhood flocks of sheep to eat the overgrowing flora instead of lawn mowers).

To remind humans that everything we do is an interaction. That we exist in a realm of pure life, and that no form of life is “less” than any other form of life because we are all part of the same thing. When one understands this, illusions that we are conditioned to believe as real begin to crumble, and the knowledge of how to live in a balanced and honorable way returns to us.

What also comes to us is the nakedly obvious sight of how far in the wrong direction we are going, and how much true damage and trauma we have caused to this Earth and everyone here.

And it does not end there, because when one ponders these matters long enough, one discovers that nothing ends anywhere. We are part of one continuous current of movement and existence. One that has no beginning and no end. There is no single thing that is not connected to everything else, nothing that is isolated.

There is no such thing as an island. Only the illusion of one.

If there is an overarching theme to all of my writing, it is a to help wake up this state of mind in people. To encourage people to pursue personal philosophy and awakening of their Spirit instead of putting faith in the convoluted, faceless systems that we are taught to worship and trust blindly.

When this sort of mind-state is found, you discover that you need not be taught or shown anything in order to understand what you are. You have been able to feel it all along. You see that your greatest teachers and mentors are all around you, in many more forms than just other human beings, and that the most valuable knowledge cannot be bought; it can only be seen, for it is hiding right in front of you.

These are things that Natives all across the Earth have once known. They are understandings that have been erased time again by genocide and greed and corruption and capitalism, but the Earth remembers.

I remember.

So do you. So does everyone. Many just need to un-bury this knowledge that they have carried and been taught to ignore forever. It is buried because we are being systematically conditioned to forget it. To forget ourselves and move through this world as though we are something separate from the rest of nature.

When we forget that we are a part of nature, when we forget that this Earth is our home, is us; that is when we lose everything. It is when we lose more than we ever thought possible.

I am able to remember because I have spent a huge amount of time alone. Listening to both myself and to the Earth. When one does that, one learns that the Earth has a whole lot to say that will never be taught in a university or read in a book of science. One learns that ones’ own self has a lot to say.

The things that I truly value and pursue in this life; Spiritual clarity, the ability to tap into my deepest wells of creativity and release them into the world before I die, having a strong relationship with the Earth and our fellow inhabitants of Nature who have been so tragically overlooked and de-valued by modern humanity, these are pursuits that are found through solitude.

It may look different than others’ idea of what a full life may be.

Though I assure you, it is no less of a full life.

Thank you for reading.

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