III—CONCEPTS OF LONELINESS

The loneliness of modern life may be considered in two ways: the existential loneliness which inevitably is a part of human experience, and the loneliness of self-alienation and self-rejection which is not loneliness at all but a vague and disturbing anxiety.

Existential loneliness is an intrinsic and organic reality of human life in which there is both pain and triumphant creation emerging out of long periods of desolation. In existential loneliness man is fully aware of himself as an isolated and solitary individual while in loneliness anxiety man is separated from himself as a feeling and knowing person.

LONELINESS ANXIETY

Loneliness anxiety results from a fundamental breach between what one is and what one pretends to be, a basic alienation between man and man and between man and his nature.

Insidious fears of loneliness exist everywhere, nourished and fed by a sense of values and standards, by a way of life, which centers on acquisition and control. The emphasis on conformity, following directions, imitation, being like others, striving for power and status, increasingly alienates man from himself. The search for safety, order, and lack of anxiety through prediction and mastery eventually arouses inward feelings of despair and fears of loneliness. Unable to experience life in a genuine way, unable to relate authentically to his own nature and to other selves, the individual in Western culture often suffers from a dread of nothingness.

Why is it that so many individuals in modern life yearn for a fundamental relatedness to others but are unable to experience it? What is it that stands between man and man? Why is it that in face-to-face meetings man is unable to be spontaneous, truthful, direct with his fellow man? What makes so many people today act in opposition to their own natures, to their own desires and requirements? Why is self-estrangement and fear of loneliness so common in modern life? Margaret Wood in one of the few significant studies of loneliness, has asked, “What is there in us, or in the society of our time, that makes each of us a solitary individual, separate and apart, alone, yet needing others and needed by them?”{2}

Loneliness anxiety is a widespread condition in contemporary society. The individual no longer has an intimate sense of relatedness to the food he eats, the clothing he wears, the shelter which houses him. He no longer participates directly in the creation and production of the vital needs of his family and community. He no longer fashions with his own hands or from the desires of his heart. Modern man does not enjoy the companionship, support, and protection of his neighbors. He has been sharply cut off from primary groups and from family and kinship ties. He lives in an impersonal urban or suburban community where he meets others not as real persons but according to prescribed rules of conduct and prescribed modes of behavior. He strives to acquire the latest in comfort, convenience, and fashion. He works in a mechanized society, in which he is primarily a consumer, separated from any direct and personal contact with creation. Modern man is starving for communion with his fellow man and with other aspects of life and nature.

The fear of loneliness is an acute problem today because man has lost his world and he has lost his experience of neighborliness and community life. He experiences a feeling of alienation from the human world about him and he suffers from a corroding feeling of estrangement.{3}

Without intensive ties which have genuine meaning, modern man maintains an essential anonymity in society and in his community. Associations often are on a contractual basis and the person is treated as an object or thing or commodity. The individual fulfills his role in order to attain a higher reward, not because there is intrinsic value in being one’s self, but because there is an economic value toward which one is directed. With advances in production, with the development of mechanical and automatic devices, with the change from rural to urban living, with the emphasis on making others’ services indispensable, man has become increasingly competitive, exploitative, status conscious, and suspicious of his neighbor. He seeks group adjustment rather than group solidarity and enters into relations on the basis of formal agreements and contracts rather than trust. In modern life, much social interaction is between surface figures or ghosts rather than real persons.

Modern man lives without a personal world in which he has meaningful and enduring ties. The problem of this loss of world is not simply one of lack of interpersonal relations or lack of communion with one’s fellows. Rollo May explains alienation, as follows:

Underlying the economic, social and psychological aspects of alienation can be found a profound common denominator, namely, the alienation which is the ultimate consequence of four centuries of the outworking of the separation of man as subject from the objective world. This alienation has expressed itself for several centuries in Western man’s passion to gain power over nature, but now shows itself in an estrangement from nature and a vague, unarticulated, and half-suppressed sense of despair of gaining any real relationship with the natural world, including one’s own body.{4}

The separation of self from others and from nature constitutes the primary condition of loneliness anxiety in modern societies. The unhappiness, misery, fakery, pretense, the surface meetings, the failure to find genuine human contact often result in a fear and dread of loneliness.

Elder citizens in our society are particularly affected by the social and cultural changes and by the separation, urbanization, alienation, and automation in modern living. There is no longer a place for old age, no feeling of organic belonging, no reverence or respect or regard for the wisdom and talent of the ancient. Our elder citizens so often have feelings of uselessness, so often experience life as utterly futile. Old age is fertile soil for loneliness and the fear of a lonely old age far outweighs the fear of death in the thinking of many people.{5} Loss of friends and death of contemporaries are realities. The mourning and deep sense of loss are inevitable but the resounding and lasting depression which results and the emptiness and hopelessness are all a measure of the basic loneliness anxiety of our time.

Modern man is plagued with the vague, diffuse fear of loneliness. He goes to endless measures, takes devious and circuitous pathways to avoid facing the experience of being lonely. Perhaps the loneliness of a meaningless existence, the absence of values, convictions, beliefs, and the fear of isolation are the most terrible kind of loneliness anxiety. This is the message in Balzac’s The Inventor’s Suffering:

But learn one thing, impress it upon your mind which is still so malleable: man has a horror of aloneness. And of all kinds of aloneness, moral aloneness is the most terrible. The first hermits lived with God, they inhabited the world which is most populated, the world of the spirits. The first thought of man, be he a leper or a prisoner, a sinner or invalid, is: to have a companion of his fate. In order to satisfy this drive which is life itself, he applies all his strength, all his power, the energy of his whole life.

Loneliness anxiety in pathologic extremes is not rare in our society. It indicates a serious disturbance in health, often in the form of a bland existence. It is a type of chronic illness which debilitates the person and stifles any emergence of self or realization of capacities and talents. It is an exceedingly unpleasant, driving experience, resulting from inadequate fulfillment of the need for human intimacy—beginning in the early years with a failure to establish rich contact with the living, extending to the frustration of the need for tenderness and protective care, and into adult years when there is a failure to meet others on a genuine, fundamental, loving basis.

Frieda Fromm-Reichmann has made intensive studies of the psychiatric problems of loneliness anxiety based on her efforts to break through the loneliness she experienced from an inability and failure to communicate with schizophrenic patients, and the glorious moment when intimate contact was established. She relates one significant encounter with loneliness in the following passages.

Perhaps my interest began with the young catatonic woman who broke through a period of completely blocked communication and obvious anxiety by responding when I asked her a question about her feeling miserable: She raised her hand with her thumb lifted, isolated from the four hidden fingers. I interpreted the signal with, “That lonely?,” in a sympathetic tone of voice. At this, her facial expression loosened up as though in great relief and gratitude, and her fingers opened. Then she began to tell me about herself by means of her fingers, and she asked me by gestures to respond in kind. We continued with this finger conversation for one or two weeks, and as we did so, her anxious tension began to decrease and she began to break through her non-communicative isolation; and subsequently she emerged altogether from her loneliness.{6}

Is there any more heart-rending communication of panic than the terrifying feelings of loneliness expressed in the poem of a schizophrenic patient?

And is there anyone at all?

 

And is

There anyone at all?

I am knocking at the oaken door...

And will it open Never now no more?

I am calling, calling to you—

Don’t you hear?

And is there anyone

Near?

And does this empty silence have to be?

And is there no-one there at all

To answer me?

 

I do not know the road—

I fear to fall

And is there anyone

At all?{7}

The emptiness of loneliness is revealed in this poem:

No one comes near here Morning or night.

The desolate grasses

Grow out of sight.

Only the wild hare

Strays, then is gone.

The Landlord is silence.

The tenant is dawn.{8}

In these poems, it is obvious that the individuals felt sharply cut-off, drastically isolated and abandoned. They saw no hope at all in restoring a sense of relatedness, in communing with nature and other persons. They felt a complete absence of concern and love in the world.

Many individuals long fervently to be with others and to find love, but they are held back by their own restraining fears. Often accompanying this feeling of loneliness anxiety is a smoldering but helpless rage and a desire for revenge for being “left out” of life. This feeling of being cut-off and rejected is painfully expressed by a young woman in psychotherapy:

I always wanted her to love me and she never did. She always thought more of someone else than she did of me I never really pleased her because I did not have curly hair She thought more of others than she did of me She thought more of my cousin Mabel than she did of me She thought more of my sister than she did of me I cannot continue to care for people when they do not care for me My mother did not care for me She never believed in anything I did She did not even believe that I was sick She never cared that I was ill She did not care that I suffered so she did not care she never cared she never cared for me and I loved her so much I thought her so wonderful I thought her so beautiful She always seemed very beautiful to me but she never really loved me. If she had she would not have pushed me away when I came to kiss her good night If she had loved me she would not have done that She would have believed in me She would have cared when I was ill and suffered So but she didn’t care She thought I deserved to be ill because I had done so many wrong things Everything I had ever done was wrong and my illness when I suffered so was my punishment for doing everything wrong She was not sorry She did not care She was glad She was glad I suffered so She laughed at my suffering I knew she laughed though I did not really see her but I knew she laughed I lay in bed and suffered so and she was glad and laughed at me and I came to hate her because I loved her so much and she never cared for me I hated her and wished to kill her I would have killed her if I could because she never cared for me.{9}

The chronically lonely person sometimes sends out appeals for friendship and a mate. Lonely hearts clubs and similar organizations are a product of twentieth century society and twentieth century loneliness anxiety. Thousands of lost and hungry souls appeal to these organizations which promise, “Somewhere a voice is calling—calling to you.” In a scathing critique of these groups, Steiner writes:

Most of the advertising sent out by the Clubs are masterpieces of double-talk, creating the impression that this is a guaranteed method of solving one’s loneliness. Close scrutiny reveals, however, that they actually say only that they understand their business and know how to conduct it.{10}

A story of the failure of a “lonely hearts” marriage was reported in The Detroit Free Press (August 18, 1959). The headline read: “Brought Together In Loneliness, Oldsters Part In Bitterness.” The story continues:

A lonely widower. A lonely widow. A “lonely hearts” listing. A marriage. A divorce—just two years later....They lived as man and wife until a year ago, and since only have lived in the same house. In granting a divorce, the judge said, “This is the same old story. Two elderly lonely people thrown together, each in the hope they would improve their lot. You couldn’t find two more clashing personalities anywhere. The only thing they had in common was loneliness. Lonely hearts magazines are fiendish devices.”{11}

Feelings of inferiority are also connected with loneliness anxiety. Great pain and suffering is provoked by a feeling of being unloved and neglected. Thomas Wolfe described these torturing feelings of inferiority when he wrote:

Forever and forever in our loneliness, shameful feelings of inferiority will rise up suddenly to overwhelm us in a poisonous flood of horror, disbelief, and desolation, to sicken and corrupt our health and confidence, to spread pollution at the very root of strong, exultant joy.{12}

In attempting to overcome loneliness anxiety, the individual sometimes gives up his individuality and submerges himself in dependency relations. Fromm explains why such a solution to standing alone in the face of a perilous and powerful world inevitably fails.

Just as a child can never return to the mother’s womb physically, so it can never reverse, psychically, the process of individuation. Attempts to do so necessarily assume the character of submission, in which the basic contradiction between the authority and the child who submits to it is never eliminated. Consciously the child may feel secure and satisfied, but unconsciously it realizes that the price it pays is giving up strength and the integrity of its self. Thus the result of submission is the very opposite of what it was to be: submission increases the child’s insecurity and at the same time creates hostility and rebelliousness, which is the more frightening since it is directed against the very persons on whom the child has remained or become dependent.{13}

The person suffering from loneliness anxiety is deeply suspicious. Even the slightest criticism hurts him. He often perceives non-existent deprecation in surface or tangential remarks. Because he feels such grave failure in everything he undertakes, because he constantly strives to raise his level of achievement and win praise and approval and at the same time employs devices and strategies which constantly alienate him from others, eventually he either gives up or responds with aggression to cover up his inner feeling of separation, anxiety, and despair. He is not open enough, flexible enough, expansive enough to attach himself to new persons and find value in new experiences. If he could only surrender to his real loneliness, he might emerge as a new person.

Aggressiveness often is a disguise of loneliness anxiety and may be expressed as cynicism and contempt for love and cultural interests. When glorification for the predatory elements in the world is broken, the person reveals a horrible loneliness and a passionate desire to be loved by other people and to belong to them. Loneliness anxiety is a defense against an unloving world, the pain of isolation, and the yearning for tenderness and security. Underneath this defense, the individual reveals an excessive and repressed sentimentality and experiences immense anxiety that his weakness will be exposed.

Much of the loneliness anxiety in our society is not the psychiatric loneliness which results from rejection or abandonment in childhood. It is possible to live too much in the world, to try to escape loneliness by constant talk, by surrounding one’s self with others, by modeling one’s life from people in authority or with high status. Alienated from his own self, the individual does not mean what he says and does not do what he believes and feels. He learns to respond with surface or approved thoughts. He learns to use devious and indirect ways, and to base his behavior on the standards and expectations of others. Cut-off from his own self, he is unable to have communal experiences with others, though he may be popular, or to experience a sense of relation with nature. Many of these individuals love truth, yet their lives are predicated on appearances and false ties; they do not concentrate their energies enough to be able to become in fact what they are in inspiration. Literally millions of adults who are protected and loved, who experienced intimate relations in their early years, suffer the consequences of an impersonal, competitive world of self-denial and alienation. They often go to great lengths to escape or overcome the fear of loneliness, to avoid any direct or genuine facing of their own inner experience. What is it that drives man to surround himself with the same external double-talk, the same surface interests and activities during his evenings at home as during his days at work?{14} It is the terror of loneliness, not loneliness itself but loneliness anxiety, the fear of being left alone, of being left out. It is absolutely necessary to keep busy, active, have a full schedule, be with others, escape into the fantasies, dramas, and lives of others on television or in the movies. Everything is geared toward filling and killing time to avoid feeling the emptiness of life and the vague dissatisfactions of acquiring possessions, gaining status and power, and behaving in the appropriate and approved ways. The escape from loneliness is actually an escape from facing the fear of loneliness.

Cultural interests and activities and community pursuits provide a powerful antidote to the fear of loneliness. But all the while, the person experiences loneliness in a vague and undifferentiated form—the loneliness anxiety of feeling alone even in a crowd, of talking incessantly with others while not saying anything meaningful or productive, of discussing the same subjects in the same ways in different groups—the loneliness anxiety of being a member of a club or organization without any true identity or relatedness to others, of acquisition without satisfaction—the anxiety of consuming where there is no essential tie to creating—the anxiety created when real desires and interests are abandoned in favor of social, economic, and vocational rewards. The other directed person is a lonely person who tries to assuage his loneliness in the crowd, in the poker game in the back room with its praise of masks, at cocktail parties afternoon and night.{15} Whyte has shown how the attempt to overcome loneliness in suburban life extends to the planning of houses.

All other things being equal—and it is amazing how much all other things are equal in suburbia—it would appear that certain kinds of physical layouts can virtually produce the “happy” group. To some the moral would seem simplicity itself. Planners can argue that if they can find what it is that creates cohesiveness it would follow that by deliberately building these features into the new housing they could at once eliminate the loneliness of modern life.{16}

Efforts of this kind result in a sick loneliness, the loneliness of fakery and pretense, the loneliness of the calculated and contrived, the loneliness of a ready-made solution replacing the satisfaction of creating with one’s own talents, capacities, and skills.

One does not combat loneliness with plans which aim to create an aura of friendliness. Efforts to deceive the individual by the subtle and invisible emanation of neighborliness, to surround him with an atmosphere of community fellowship through arrangement of color and design, only accentuate the emptiness of life. Contrived cheerfulness, warmth, and invitation register deep down as superficial openness and leave the person feeling that there is no genuine way to establish roots with others. If other-directed people could discover how much meaningless work they do, if they could see that they can no more assuage their loneliness in a crowd of peers or by manipulating the environment than one can mitigate one’s thirst by drinking sea water, then we might expect them to become more attentive to their own real feelings and aspirations, to realize the significance of their own real lives, and to search for genuine relatedness with others and with nature.{17}

EXISTENTIAL LONELINESS

In contrast to the loneliness anxiety of modern life is the inevitable, real loneliness of genuine experience. Thomas Wolfe regarded loneliness as an intrinsic condition of existence.

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence....All this hideous doubt, despair, and dark confusion of the soul a lonely man must know, for he is united to no image save that which he creates himself, he is bolstered by no other knowledge save that which he can gather for himself with the vision of his own eyes and brain. He is sustained and cheered and aided by no party, he is given comfort by no creed, he has no faith in him except his own. And often that faith deserts him, leaving him shaken and filled with impotence. And then it seems to him that his life has come to nothing, that he is ruined, lost, and broken past redemption, and that morning—bright, shining morning, with its promise of new beginnings—will never come upon the earth again as it did once.{18}

Wolfe believed that loneliness is an essential condition of creativity, that out of the depths of grief, despair, and the shattering feeling of total impotency springs the urge to create new forms and images and to discover unique ways of being aware and expressing experience.

The vastness of life itself produces the emotional climate of existential loneliness, the mystery of a new dawn, the endless stretches of sea and sky, the immense impact of air, and time, and space, the unfathomable workings of the universe. The constant, everlasting weather of man’s life is not love but loneliness. Love is the rare and precious flower but loneliness pervades each new day and each new night.

The deepest experiences the soul can know—the birth of a baby, the prolonged illness or death of a loved relative, the tortuous pain or the isolation of disease, the creation of a poem, a painting, a symphony, the grief of a fire, a flood, an accident—each in its own way touches upon the roots of loneliness. In all these experiences we must perforce go alone.

The inevitability of the lonely heart is expressed in the following poem:

Sometimes I wonder what will become of me

My heart yearns for permanence which never can be

I do not know a real face any more

And my compassion is misplaced

The spontaneity and joy and continuity are gone

Where is the beginning which remains

Where is the heart which speaks only truth

No where, no more, will I find commitment to meet mine

To live a lie, to die of life, to search in failure

Is this to be my destiny?

It takes creative courage to accept the inevitable, existential loneliness of life, to face one’s essential loneliness openly and honestly. It requires inner fortitude not to be afraid or overwhelmed with the fear of being and the fear of being alone.

The experience of separation or isolation is not unhealthy any more than any condition of human existence is unhealthy. Ultimately each man is alone but when the individual maintains a truthful self-identity, such isolation is strengthening and induces deeper sensitivities and awareness. In contrast, self-alienation and estrangement drive one to avoid separation. The fear of loneliness is a sickness which promotes dehumanization and insensitivity. In the extreme, the person stops feeling altogether and tries to live solely by rational means and cognitive directions. This is the terrible tragedy of modern life—the alienation of man from his own feelings, the desensitization of man to his own suffering and grief, the fear of man to experience his own loneliness and pain and the loneliness and misery of others.

Loneliness is as much organic to human existence as the blood is to the heart. It is a dimension of human life whether existential, sociological, or psychological, whatever its derivatives or forms, whatever its history, it is a reality of life. Its fear, evasion, denial, and the accompanying attempts to escape the experience of being lonely will forever isolate the person from his own existence, will afflict and separate him from his own resources so that there is no development, no creative emergence, no growth in awareness, perceptiveness, sensitivity. If the individual does not exercise his loneliness, one significant capacity and dimension of being human remains undeveloped, denied. A fear of despair, an agony of aloneness replaces the real experience but strategies of escape and alienation can never substitute for the growth-inducing, deepening values of a genuine, vital, lonely experience.

Loneliness has a developmental history beginning in infancy, when the need for contact is temporarily unresolved, and continuing through the need for ultimate relatedness. It enters into crucial periods of development and critical experiences in childhood and reaches full significance in preadolescence. Sullivan{19} traced the various motivational systems in human development which enter into the experience of real loneliness. The first is the need for contact—tenderness and protective care in infancy and the early years. These needs extend into childhood when components of what will ultimately be experienced as loneliness appear in the need for adult participation in activities. When the child cannot obtain adult presence and participation, loneliness results. The child attempts to assuage the feeling of isolation by entering into a rich fantasy life, and by engaging in imaginary personifications. The greater the intensity of separation, the greater the development of his sense of social isolation and parental rejection. Each person as he grows experiences a sense of separation as a natural challenge to the development of individuality. This sense of isolation is dramatically felt by the child. Because of his inability to take care of himself in the all-important functions, communication with others is a matter of life and death for him. The possibility of being abandoned or left alone is the most serious threat to the child’s whole existence.{20} Of the many kinds of temporary abandonment, no experience is more desolating to a child than having to be in a hospital alone. The cold marble floors; the impersonal rules and regulations; the extreme bleak whiteness everywhere; the desensitized atmosphere; the neat, empty categorical arrangement of food and beds, external to the individual child and his personal preferences; the constant checks and routines; the frequent medication and shots which he does not comprehend; the disrespect for the integrity of his wishes and interests; the absence of genuine human warmth; and the presence of surface voices, surface smiles, and superficial words and meetings; all enter into the loneliness of hospital life.

For years medical people have known that hospitalization may do a child more harm than good—not only in contributing to his sense of abandonment, but in the development of terrifying fears, anxiety, and traumas which survive long after the physical defect has been rectified. Knowing the significance of emotional factors in the etiology of physical disease and in the development of health, doctors and nurses have made efforts to reach the child, sympathetically expressing concern for his pain, being more gentle, giving information, and sometimes even allowing the child to set the pace. But most children see through this kind of behavior when it is mere role-playing or rank professionalism. This kind of surface behavior is easily distinguished by the child from the spontaneous feelings of the heart. Furthermore, even the genuine feelings of a nurse or physician can never reach deeply enough to substitute for the love embedded in the child’s relationship with his mother or father. The nurse or doctor can never give him a feeling of safety and the strength to face the severe trial of a painful illness.

Why is it that hospitals continue to move mothers and fathers “out of the way” when scientific evidence is now available affirming the vital nature of the mother’s presence in restoring the child to health. The mother is certainly significant as a curative agent and sometimes absolutely crucial to the child’s recovery.

Contrary to previous beliefs, parents do not, as a rule, interfere with hospital procedures, and, on the contrary, can assist the hard-pressed staff and greatly aid the child in recovery from the trauma of hospitalization and from operative conditions. In the hospital, as in the home, the emotional anchorage of the mother offers many assets for recovery and for healthy emotional growth.

Harold, for example, showed regression in many aspects of his behavior when he had his tonsillectomy at the hospital. The anxiety he suffered in being able to see his mother only in the evening precipitated his regression and made his convalescence during and after hospitalization more difficult and prolonged than it might have been. In Harold’s case, the practice of the hospital in advising his parents not to remain with him before and after the operation literally severed him from the anchorage he so desperately needed during his emotionally traumatic experience.{21}

With evidence consistently pointing to the necessity of mother and child remaining together during a crisis, why does the hospital insist on separating them? Why, with the evidence showing that the individual knows himself better than anyone else, is the child in the hospital so ignored and mistrusted? Why, when we have learned through serious mistakes that in an authoritarian atmosphere, children rebel at the first opportunity, or submit to the point of total self-denial, do most hospitals continue to operate with the discipline of an army barracks in wartime?

When a child is in terror in a hospital, he needs his parents in every painful experience to help him bear the loneliness of living with strangers who often apparently care more about X-rays, charts, and shots, and temperatures, and tests, than they do about him. There is no one, absolutely no one, who can comfort the child, and give him the strength to face his ordeal except his mother or father or some person to whom he is significantly related. Instead of making a place available for parents where they can participate and share in the child’s fears and pains, all sorts of devices are used to extricate parents, not only from the room but in accompanying a child when he must face the terrible ordeals of X-rays and other tests. The many strangers who are part of these procedures rarely have any concern for the individual child. One thing is certain, if a parent decides to stay with his child through every one of these frightening procedures, no amount of pressure on the part of hospital staff can evict the parent. But when the parent leaves the child alone to face hospital tests and hospital strangers, the parent cannot know what horrors the child may be subjected to and what emotional lacerations will be inflicted upon him. The parent cannot answer when the child cries out in distress.

Every child who is significantly related to his mother or father requires the presence of the parent in every important experience in the hospital until he himself decides he is able to be alone. No amount of dictation or persuasion on the part of nurses or doctors should cause the parent to abandon the child. In this respect, Dr. Alvarez comments:

One of the cruelest things we do in America is to send a child up to the operating room all by himself. The mother should go with the child at least up to the operating-room floor, where, perhaps in a special room, the child could be anesthetized while the mother is present. Then the sleeping child could be wheeled into the operating room.

As I have said before, it is time that hospital authorities began to think of these things. They ought to realize that when parents and children are left with very distressing memories of what happened in the hospital, this does not make for good public relations.{22}

The parents’ presence not only contributes positively to the child’s sense of security and confidence, which are certainly vital ingredients in his recovery, but also enables him to continue to be an individual with unique interests and unique ways. Parents are able to help the child continue to grow by providing time and resources, while hospital staffs, with so many pressing responsibilities, cannot become genuinely concerned with the individual child and his interests, wishes, and needs.

When a child asks a question, he has a right to an answer and he has a right to the truth—simple, direct, forthright. After all, he wants to know what is being done to him and why. The information will enable him to accept the treatment. He can accept much more fully what he can understand.

The loneliness which the child experiences even when the parent is present is painful enough because in the end there are certain experiences which the child must face alone. There are times when he will realize how alone he is as an individual. This is the inevitable loneliness of human existence. But when the child is abandoned, his terror lives inside. He will always remember the lonely, isolated hours of abandonment. He feels that if his parents really loved and cared for him they would not have left him to face his pain alone.

However appealing the arguments of the physician or nurse may be, as long as the child requires it, the parent must remain or answer for the consequences of a severe traumatic experience for the child. When our daughter, Wendy, was in the hospital for an emergency overnight visit, she deeply wanted her mother to remain. The nurse used every trick to persuade Wendy that her mother’s presence was not essential. The hospital could provide for all her needs. Wendy remained adamant. She needed her mother standing by to help her live through the fear and the pain. Finally, in desperation, the nurse said, “But every time you want something all you need do is to ring this buzzer and the nurse will come.” Wendy answered immediately, “If I wake up at night and cry and call for my Momma, I want her here. The buzzer cannot bring her to me.” Wendy’s mother stayed. Wendy woke up several times and called. Her mother was there to comfort her and give her sustenance. And when a child calls and the mother is not there to answer, then what terrors does the child experience in his heart? This terror of the heart is something a person can understand only if he opens himself to it. Every nurse and doctor would want the parent to remain if he knew the meaning of the child’s desperate existence when he lay in bed at night, terrified and alone.

THE LONELY EXPERIENCE{23}

In all my thirteen years I have only been lonely once, that is really lonely. When I was seven years old I cut my hand on broken glass. I went to the doctor and from there to the hospital with some severed tendons.

I wasn’t at all bothered. I thought it would be a real “blast.”

I was happy when I got my bed in the girls’ section on the childrens’ ward, and when I met my neighbors who were twins (both eight years old) and having their tonsils removed. I was happy when they wheeled me into the operating room. I wasn’t too sad even when they gave me that awful ether and I went to “Sleepville, U.S.A.”

I was happy throughout the day. After all Mom and Dad were there, the girls next door were nice, the T.V. worked, and I had a real “cool” cast to show off to all the kids.

It wasn’t until I discovered I was to spend the night alone at the hospital that I realized it wasn’t going to be all fun.

That night after Mom and Dad were gone and everyone was sleeping I experienced loneliness for the first time in my life.

I yelled for the nurse. She brought me ice-water and a sedative of some sort to put me to sleep. Of course it didn’t work. That night I sat up in bed ‘till about midnight when the nurse came in and told me that my mother had called and asked about me. The nurse told her I was asleep (the liar).

The night dragged on and on and I was absolutely miserable. The cracks in the wall became monsters. It was one o’clock A.M. when I began to wonder where Mom was. She was to get me at 10:00 A.M.

The night was a lonely nightmare. I spent every second of it sitting, fretting, tossing, turning, crying to myself, and yelling “Nurse!” To make things worse I didn’t like the nurse and there was no one awake to talk to (except a stupid boy in the boys’ ward). Now I feel sorry for him, he must have been lonely too.

When Mom finally came I forgot how terribly lonely I was. I forgot just how bad it was until now six years later, when you gave us this opportunity to tell our experiences of loneliness.

I am afraid the only effect or mark that night left on me was bad. Now I am scared stiff of hospitals.

 

Feelings of loneliness must often be hidden in childhood. They are too frightening and disturbing—like any intense, severe, disturbing emotion these feelings must be curbed, controlled, denied, or, if expressed, quickly resolved or eliminated through busy activities and goals. One aspect of this “cover up” campaign is that we make our children feel that “nice” people have only “nice” emotions.{24} Children become afraid early to let others know how they actually feel. The natural and inevitable loneliness resulting in childhood must be distorted and controlled in interactions with others. The child soon believes he can show his parents only an expurgated, carefully edited version of his inner life. He begins to suffer deep feelings of guilt and inadequacy as he learns to regard his loneliness as “bad” and as a kind of sickness. The natural loneliness of inner life becomes confounded and confused, and sometimes the child enters into the tragic loneliness anxiety of self-alienation. For this reason it is important to give children an opportunity to express their experiences of loneliness. It is one way to break through the terrible sense of guilt and isolation. The following essays provided such an opportunity for a group of preadolescent youngsters. In these essays, the very core of the lonely experience is captured.

1.

Empty, that’s how it feels to be lonely. A sense of being in a deep dark pit, with nothing in sight, and no way out. It feels like a dark rainy day. Just there, just sitting there lonely. It’s like a blue, a dark blue, almost a black, but then it’s also a light blue, washed out and dingy. It’s a deep empty pit in your stomach.

Loneliness brings thinking. When lonely I feel like thinking. Not anything special, just thinking—

Loneliness leaves some after-effects. Mostly just a tired feeling. Not wanting to talk to anyone, not wanting to do anything. But, most of them can be remedied by just starting to do something. Something that you like to do.

2.

When loneliness strikes I feel thoroughly abandoned.

To me loneliness seems to have different stages. At first I usually feel somewhat mad, even a little bitter toward the person who caused my loneliness. Many things pass through my mind when I’m lonely. After a while I sometimes begin to wonder—is our friendship really worth these countless, tormenting hours?

It seems almost as though a transparent barrier has separated my world from that of my friend. A barrier too high to scale and too solid to get through. Therefore I’m a captive of loneliness until it chooses to release me.

To me it seems that loneliness is sort of a cunning thing. It kind of knows “torture” methods of its own. Sometimes it can begin to convince you that false truths are right, or it can let you see your friends having fun without you, and that can hurt.

After I have been lonely for some time things usually start to reason out. Gradually loneliness loosens its grip completely and everything is fine again.

3.

Loneliness as described in the dictionary means without company, lonely. I believe that it goes a lot deeper than just lonely, or without company.

In the loneliness that I am going to tell about it was mostly an empty feeling, a feeling that I was not wanted, even though I was a member of a group.

I was in the sixth grade and I was in a small group of girls. Most people call this a clique. We had parties every weekend with the same boys and girls, never letting any outsiders in. But we did let some out or shall I say kick them out. We took one girl and made the going rough for her until she finally had to drop out of the clique.

I saw how much this girl was hurt and decided never to do anything like that again to anybody.

When the group tried to kick another girl out I was against it and I guess it showed because gradually I was scorned by the girls too and shoved out of the group.

Naturally I was hurt and lonely but I couldn’t do much about it. Through this experience I have witnessed and felt that horrible feeling of loneliness. I have profited from this experience. My beliefs now are different. I try to act human to everybody and not just to a few girls in a clique.

4.

It was a terrible experience.

This is the way I would describe how I felt when my best boy-friend moved.

Up until this point in my life, he seemed to be the only real friend I had—oh, I had other boy-friends, but to me, he seemed just like a brother.

The period from the day he left to about a week after was about the worst for me. I felt that life was all over for me, and there seemed to be nothing to look forward to.

Nothing seemed to go right for me, and I felt that no one in the world could possibly be as lonely as I was.

I was beginning to hope that the world would come to an end.

—I didn’t care.

5.

Slowly I walked up and down the room. The house was empty. A pang of loneliness came over me. I felt small and alone looking at the deep blue of the sky. The shadows of the willow coated the ground in black. Loneliness, not a new feeling, seemed to come like a shadow with the setting sun. The melancholy scene filled me with the longing for someone, anyone. Time seemed suspended. No sound broke the silence of the evening. I was completely shut off from the world. Then from out of no-where there came the sound of a motor and light broke through the colorless scene. A car slowly turned up the driveway, allowing time to go on and the sun to set.

These experiences of loneliness are not rare. They are realities which children face every year—happenings beyond human control or prediction. Which of us has not known the child alone at home, temporarily abandoned by his parents, the child without friends and with “nothing to do,” the child sent away to camp or school, the child who feels completely isolated in the group, the child who feels his parents do not love him or who feels they care more for his brother or sister, the child who is not recognized or chosen at school, the one who is usually left out, the child who faces an overnight or lengthy hospitalization, the child in a new school or a new neighborhood, the child who walks to and from school alone, the child facing a new school year without friends, the child whose pals reject him or turn against him, the child condemned by his parents, forced to stay alone in his room as punishment. These are situations which nearly every child faces at some time in his life, but they do not necessarily defeat or alienate him. These experiences of loneliness have potential value and are a way to learning and to a new life.

Riesman has forcefully shown how inner-directed children suffer a fate of loneliness both in and outside the home where there may be frequent hazing, persecution, and misunderstanding. He says the adult rarely offers sympathy or guidance to the lonely child. Often these children are even unaware that they have rights to friendship, understanding, or agreeable play. They are unaware that adults may be interested in such matters. They often suffer in silence. Riesman sees advantages of loneliness, as the following excerpt shows.

We can see that in a society which values inner-direction, loneliness and even persecution are not thought of as the worst of fates....While adults seldom intervene to guide or help the lonely child, neither do they tell him that he should be a part of a crowd and must have fun.{25}

Thus the lonely child is left alone, free of many of the usual pressures for conformity. Regarded as strange or peculiar, perceived as an isolate, he is free to experience his existential loneliness, to exercise and actualize this capacity and in the process to become sensitive and aware of the world in a deep and meaningful way.

Loneliness is a creative experience when it emerges naturally from the individual self. This is well documented. The person who stands out in literature, music, art, science is often a lonely individual. He realizes creative forms through his own self. The lonely voyager, the mountain climber, the seafarer, the explorer, the inventor, all know moments of deep, unforgettable loneliness. In expressing one’s uniqueness, the person often appears to others as peculiar, different, deviant, and sometimes even bizarre. It is terribly lonely to be misunderstood, wrongly interpreted, falsely analyzed, to be impugned with evil motives. Being different, standing out in a group is often regarded as a sign of psycho-social illness. More and more the individual who stands alone, even though of high ideals and constructive values, may be forced to isolate himself or to struggle for society’s acceptance of him as a unique person. In expressing his sense of inner truth, the creative person must often experience a desolate and lonely existence. This was the nature of the experience of a young man in psychotherapy who was trying to maintain his idiosyncratic perceptions.

...and then sometimes I (pause), I don’t know if this makes sense, but...sometimes I just feel that...I want to exist, so to speak, completely...within myself, I mean, within...without any...social intercourse...And then (sighs) at other times I feel that I don’t want to exist within myself at all because it...brings sort of agony or torment or sort of mental...hardships. And then I just want to...indulge in complete...normal...social...relationships, and I don’t want at all to exist within myself...But, as I said...I mean, deep within myself, I feel that it has to be. I mean, no external assurance would really alter anything or...would make any modification or...well, I mean, it has to be of some...some inner realization or inner awareness of just what I am. (Pause)...But I think the most important thing...is the fact...I feel that...well, that I realize that...the people of...I mean, the judgment of other people...outside yourself is not really...important. And you can only realize your own value...I mean through some inner awareness of what you feel that you are. And no matter what other people think of it, it makes really no difference unless you...you, yourself, feel that way about...if you don’t agree with them, then you...it just just won’t (sighs) just won’t help any...I feel that participation and things like that would only be meant toward this and that...coming to depend more upon yourself. (Pause) Well, I mean, not depend on yourself to the extent that you exclude, I mean, human relations or anything like that. (Pause) Just depend on yourself so that (pause) you realize that you (pause) do have the...potentialities, I mean, of doing something, instead of having to ask people all the time whether they think it’s right or not.{26}

The books of the Old Testament provide a profound and powerful literature, a supreme history of man’s loneliness. The terrible feeling of abandonment and isolation, the scourge of being forsaken, the loneliness of being destroyed without cause are beautifully portrayed in the sacred verse of Job.

Let the day perish wherein I was born and the night in which it was said, there is a man child conceived.

Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.

Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

As for that night, let darkness seize upon it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.

Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.

Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning....

Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?...

Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul.

Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it meantime for hid treasures;

Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God had hedged in?

For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like waters....

Oh that my grief were weighted, and my calamity laid in the balances together!

For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up.

Alienated from his friends, from all intimate human contact, cut off from his fields, his animals, his home, his family, Job makes a final appeal, supplicates God to help him understand why he has been wronged, to help him see the reasons for his calamities. He craves pity, sympathy, affirmation as he bemoans his unjust fate.

Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment....

He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.

He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath he removed like a tree....

My kinsfolk have failed and my familiar friends have forgotten me.

They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger:

I am an alien in their sight.

I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I entreated him with my mouth.

My breath is strange to my wife, though I entreated for the children’s sake of mine own body.

Yea young children despised me: I arose, and they spake against me.

All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me....

Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O Ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me....{27}

Many of the Hebrew prayers in the Yom Kippur service enable the I person to overcome the loneliness of estrangement, the isolating consequence of committing evil. A moving search for peace, harmony, relatedness, love, and identity with God is contained in lamentations from the Conclusion Service, as in the following prayer:

O may our prayers come before thee, and withdraw not thyself from our supplications, for we are not so shameless of face, or hardened, as to declare in thy presence, O Eternal, our God and the God of our fathers, that we are righteous, and have not sinned; verily (we confess) we have sinned.

We have trespassed, we have dealt treacherously, we have stolen, we have spoken slander, we have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly; we have acted presumptuously; we have committed violence; we have framed falsehood; we have counselled evil; we have uttered lies; we have scorned; we have rebelled; we have blasphemed; we have revolted; we have acted perversely; we have transgressed; we have oppressed; we have been stiff-necked; we have acted wickedly; we have corrupted; we have done abominably, we have gone astray, and have caused others to err; we have turned aside from thy excellent precepts and institutions, and which hath not profited us; but thou art just concerning all that is come upon us; for thou hast dealt most truly, but we have done wickedly.{28}

The sermons of Ecclesiastes support the value of human loneliness, cogently point out the natural state of sorrow, and show the relationship between increasing knowledge and wisdom and increasing loneliness.

I communed with mine own heart, saying Lo I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom, than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: Yea my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance....

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting; for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.{29}

Strange as it may seem, the individual in being lonely, if let be, will realize himself in loneliness and create a bond or sense of fundamental relatedness with others. Loneliness rather than separating the individual or causing a break or division of self, expands the individual’s wholeness, perceptiveness, sensitivity, and humanity. It enables the person to realize human ties and awarenesses hitherto unknown. In loneliness one is definitely alone, cut off from human companionship.

Being lonely calls for a taxing and straining of resources which toughens the individual for facing the realities of life. Most individuals today would rather not be faced with an experience which is so all-encompassing of self, which calls for the full use of human potentialities, which calls for such deep intense feeling. And most of us would rather not stand by while another plunges into such a totally desolate existence. Therefore, every effort is made to provide the lonely one with company, to get him involved in a social life, to keep him busy with obligations and tasks. It is too disturbing to let the solitary person be, to remain with him while he lives through a pitiful or tragic situation. So we escape our own discomfort and pain, and contribute to the unrealized loneliness of the other person by surrounding him with company, by talking him out of his deep depression, by getting him into other experiences as quickly as possible, by assigning him tasks which will get his mind off his plight.

The experience of seeing another person in lonely suffering is so piercingly effective, that we use every means to terminate the situation, providing new conditions and requiring a prescribed set of acts or behavior.

Alone sometimes has a positive meaning. There is more recognition today of individuality and the dangers of conformity. We are more apt to think twice before interrupting an individual when he is alone in thought or meditation or when he plunges into a solitary endeavor. But loneliness is almost always regarded as destructive and the common social urge is to rescue the lonely one. This social urge is often motivated by an inability to bear or tolerate suffering.

There is no solution to loneliness but to accept it, face it, live with it, and let it be. All it requires is the right to emerge in genuine form.

In the spiritual and creative experience, there is often no other way but the lonely way, perceiving life from one’s own being, creating oneself as one wants to be, drawing upon one’s own resources, capacities, roots—searching, suffering, struggling to emerge from one’s own inner solitude, in a quiet place. In such experiences, there is often a fixed determination to go one’s own way and a courage to stand alone. The creative person is often lonely because he must be a world in himself and must find the way in life within himself.

Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed this conviction in his address before Harvard University students in 1886.

To think great thought you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone—when you have felt around you a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and in despair have trusted to your own unshaken will—then only will you have achieved. Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten men who never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought—the subtle rapture of a postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army.{30}

Chesterton, in his essay on loneliness, was convinced that the work of English poets and novelists emerged in most original and unique form and grew best when their lives were quiet and detached. He emphatically believed in loneliness as a basic value in life, proclaiming:

And I do seriously think that Englishmen ought to make some fight for that right of ancient sanctuary, before it is broken down by the mere American herd-instinct. I have never been a Jingo, or uttered political boasts about the Splendid Isolation of England, but I would do a great deal to preserve the Splendid Isolation of Englishmen.{31}

He emphasized the absolute need to take an active stand in defense of loneliness because he was finding it increasingly difficult to take a lonely walk or find a lonely path, or spend a lonely evening.

Thoreau spent many years alone in the woods. In Walden he wrote:

I have never felt lonesome, or at least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant.{32}

He soon realized that the fancied advantages of human neighborhood were insignificant.

What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men, surely, the depot, the post office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar.{33}

Thoreau discovered that loneliness held a positive meaning and value which enabled him to experience a fundamental continuity with nature. One day in the midst of a gentle rain he became suddenly aware of

such sweet and beneficent society in nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight...an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me....Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me.{34}

The loneliness of his life was not unbearable, not thwarting or limiting at all, not foreign. On the contrary, he felt it wholesome to be alone a great part of the time. He loved to be alone and never found loneliness wearisome or dissipating. He “never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horsefly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the North Star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.{35}

Loneliness is a condition of existence which leads to deeper perception, greater awareness and sensitivity, and insights into one’s own being. New images, symbols, and ideas spring from the lonely path. The man living his life, accepting all significant dimensions of human existence is often a tragic man but he is a man who loves life dearly. And out of the pain or loss, the bitter ecstasy of brief knowing and having, comes the glory of a single moment and the creation of a song for joy.{36} In creative loneliness there is an element of separation, of being utterly alone, but there is also a strange kind of relatedness—to nature and to other persons and through these experiences, a relatedness to life itself, to I inspiration, wisdom, beauty, simplicity, value. A sense of isolation and solitude is experienced, but a relatedness to the universe is maintained. Only through fundamental relatedness can the individual develop his own identity. The individual’s loneliness is an experience in growing which leads to differentiation of self. The person’s identity comes into relief as he breathes his own spirit into everything he touches, as he relates significantly and openly with others and with the universe.

Without any deep and growing roots in the soil of loneliness, the individual moves in accordance with external signals. He does not know his place in the world, his position, where he is or who he is. He has lost touch with his own nature, his own spontaneity.

To the degree that the individual strives to attain a similarity or congruity, to the degree that he acts in order to be popular, to be victorious or to be approved of, he fails to emerge as a self, fails to develop his j unique identity, fails to grow as a creative being consistent with his own desires and capacities and consistent with a life of genuine relatedness to others.

In actualizing one’s self, one’s aspirations, ideals, and interests, it is often necessary to retreat from the world. One must have strength enough to withstand the temptations which arise when one is completely alone. This does not mean becoming uprooted or alienated. It means accepting the existential nature of man’s loneliness and seeing its value in the creation of being, in the emergence of self-identity, and in a more fundamental, genuine life. Cast in this light, loneliness becomes an illuminating experience and it leads to greater heights.

A beautiful image of the significance of the lonely experience is created by Gibran in the following poem.

Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness:

You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,

And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.

Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,

Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot

And not to be trapped by withering laurels.

And in you I have found aloneness

And the joy of being shunned and scorned.

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,

In your eyes I have read

That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,

And to be understood is to be levelled down,

And to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullness

And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,

You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,

And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings.

And urging of seas,

And of mountains that burn in the night,

And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.

 

Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,

You and I shall laugh together with the storm,

And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,

And we shall stand in the sun with a will,

And we shall be dangerous.{37}

The deep experiences in life can often be shared only in silence and communal loneliness. In moments of great grief, suffering, pain, loss, one can only stand by sharing the horror and misery, participating in still companionship, letting the loneliness be, letting it unfold into various realms of human emotions, various nuances of feelings and awarenesses. In the times when the sense of loneliness is most piercing and unbearable we can relate to others who feel and share the same loneliness and isolation, and we can relate to nature. Such depth of loneliness cannot be understood or communicated but it can be shared, as in the case of this young man who conveyed his deep experience of loneliness in the following letter written after part of his art exhibit was ravished and stolen.

The air wonders at the snow’s begin. I feel I best wonder where snow ends. The intense feelings of sorrow yesterday, the night beginning at dusk when I tried to sleep, the night of disbelief at what people will do. The bronze sculpture gone, the black painting torn. My pot broken, sand spilled, the terrible chattering room—The death of my life. At first I could not utter a sound, then it was hopeless to do so. Just a pot. Just a sculpture. Just a painting. Just a life and a life—my life. They say build another pot, make another sculpture, but they do not realize that life in each has its distinct essence never to be in another form. Where does the spirit of such life go? Why are people so cruel and thoughtless of life? I can build, and will new life but I am so painfully ashamed at the awareness of people. Art should never be locked or guarded from the lives of people. Why can they not be as noble as the breath given them? What is art to be guarded, locked, policed, untouched? Why can man not realize that his life and that of all life are the same and that each has its identity only in the ability to share essences? This incident is a haunting reminder of the weak morality of our well society. They feed on the waste of their own existences and think it alive and beautiful.

I learned pain this day. I learned pain. We never own our lives or anything. Our possession is nothing. Naked of want, nothing remains! We do not really create anything. We are but the means to present another individual entity without claim to its life. At any time the pot can be broken. Broken! Broken! Broken! The trees make no lament, yet they know the same awaits them. And we also know. Why are men so insensitive to beauty? I cannot stand their coarse screams and the murder of whatever God means in Beauty. Where is nowhere where one can be at peace?

This experience has taught me much pain. We can not be so foolish as to be possessors of life. We can not be so vain as to say “ours.” We do not create anything by cognitive wish only by the love felt of the material but then we must guard against the desire to hold. How hard it is to be content with the empty left by something we love that has gone.

Someone must have had a great need to possess my sculpture to have taken it. But gladly would I have given it to anyone who would have loved it. This does not trouble me nearly so much as the death of my pot. To be a destroyer of life is immorality, severe in even the world of the bean....The life of these words to you are perhaps my new beginning.

The swallow always wins, even now I feel better and maybe I will be able to work again. I hope so. To meet the matter death with calm is the only way, perhaps, to life.

Many times I have found courage and strength and beauty through loneliness, in an experience with nature.{38} One day I was feeling deeply depressed by the severe criticisms a colleague had received—a person who was living his life in an honest and truthful sense, attempting to express his unique nature in his work. I felt especially saddened when I realized how he had suffered, when all he wanted to do was maintain a personal and creative identity, a genuine existence and relatedness. I felt especially sensitive to pretense and surface behavior. Nothing was real. It disturbed me to see each situation as contrived, as feigned. Yet I could not call forth my own being even where there was a possibility for a genuine meeting. A numbness had settled in, right at the center of my thought and feeling. That night even the children were unable to shake my grief and sadness. In their own spontaneous, unknowing ways, they tugged and pulled at me to draw me into life, but for me there remained only suffering in the world.

After the children had gone to bed, I decided to go for a walk. The night was dark, filled with black clouds. Large white flakes of snow fell on and around me. Inside, a surging restlessness replaced my benumbed state. The night was silent and serene in spite of the atmospheric turbulence. Suddenly, without understanding in any way, I experienced a transcendental beauty in the white darkness. It was difficult to walk on the glazed, iced surface but as I walked I felt drawn to the black, inky streaks embedded in the treacherous ice. Dark wavy lines spread out in grotesque forms which were partly covered by snow. I knelt down, touching the black, irregular patterns and letting them enter inside me. Immediately I felt a chill but at the same time I felt the ice being warmed as my fingers touched it. It was a moment of communion, an experience of knowing and understanding, and a feeling of complete solace. I felt my inward heaviness lifting, and discovered a new capacity for exertion and endurance, for openly and directly facing conflicts which existed around and in me. I realized how, out of broken roots and fibers, how out of deep loneliness, a genuine encounter may occur and make possible the discovery of a new level of individual identity and new strength and conviction. I realized how the self can be shattered in surface and false meetings when surrounded by extensive pressures to conform, and how in communion with nature the self can reach a new dimension of optimism and a new recognition of the creative way of life. Possibilities for unique and unusual meetings exist everywhere. We need only reach out in natural covering to come face to face with creation.