Solitude is in the mind. Being alone is not the same. One can dwell in solitude perched upon a distant mountaintop or in the busy bustle of Starbucks, with the air percolating of chat and chatter.

     Loneliness is often confused with solitude, but it’s different. We are lonely when we are alienated from ourselves. That, too, can happen anywhere, whether sitting off by oneself or amidst a great sea of people. When meaning, self-worth, and comfort are derived solely from the company of others, being alone can seem unsettling, even terrifying ~ staring into a bottomless abyss. No hand to hold, no voice, smell or touch of another human to relieve the darkness.

     Solitude begins with befriending oneself. Stepping into the body, knowing you are right there, solidly beside yourself, you realize you are not alone. You were never alone. You have the most intimate connection with the infinitude of your vast interior universe. You are enough. Though you may get lots of goodies from being with others, they are not necessary to your own feeling of being centered, being okay. Being loved.

     The atoms in your body, as compared to the size of your body, is proportional to the body’s size as compared to the entire universe. That’s big stuff. You could sail in that space for an eternity and never reach the edge. And every point in that body is it its center.

     I’ve been studying Chinese poets from the Ming and Tang Dynasties, circa 700 A.D. They seem to have had a common and in some ways amusing thread running through their lives. Getting by in those days often meant landing a job as a functionary with the current emperor’s administration: clerk, scribe, administrator. The poet would find a sinecure somewhere, but would soon enough write poetry critical of their superiors. The Emperor would then banish them to distant lands, usual in the barren, frigid north. Ten years would go by. The regime would relent, or be overthrown, then they’d be invited back into the fold. Then they’d start writing objectionable poetry again, and once more it was off to the hinterlands.

     What a life! But often in later years, having had enough drama, the repeatedly shunned poet would retreat to the mountains (or just stay where they’d been sent). They’d spend their remaining days in simple poverty, writing poetry, meditating ~ just plain old being. This is often where their best poetry was born.

     Being alone in nature, on a distant peak or anywhere on the great globe of Earth, solitude comes easily. You’re not alone by any means ~ the world surrounds you with its multitude of life forms, none of them telling you who you should be or what you should do. They simply cry out their own array of songs from the resplendent, ever-present center of everything. Being accompanied by nature, you relax, let go of your bustling busy self, and silence the mind to a steady purring.

     Welcoming solitude into your presence, you learn to be friend, ally, and counselor to yourself. You don’t need anyone else. You are a multiverse, an infinitude of ground for joy, for pain and wonder, for grace, for the myriad manifestations of being alive.

     That ground is precisely where you then discover the beauty of connections with others, equally essential to your spirit. And because you answered the bell that rang in invitation to solitude, you’ve got all that calm energy to bring to the excitement of interactions, playing  in the field of all the other universes out there.

     I’m sitting in the midst of our seven-acre wood right now, writing this in my journal. I suppose I’m not exactly in solitude because, well, you’re here. But I guess that’s fitting: otherwise, I might not have written any of this. Or known what to say about solitude, already a subject of centuries of writing.

     But when I pull the sky deep into my lungs, exhale its return to the surrounding air, then bring its explosive oxygen back into my lungs in complete trust that it will nourish without harm, I feel at home. I’ve arrived at the place in which I have always been. I am enough. I am loved by everything around me.

     I feel nothing but love in response, flowing outward into the world in resounding ripples. I belong here. This is where we all belong.