I have perhaps been reacquainting myself too much with Thoreau and Merton and watching too many movies like “Into the Wild,” or maybe I am drawn to them because of my own inner need, but I am feeling constantly driven to seek solitude. This is not new, but I am somehow thinking of it in a different way. As I wander the streets of Seattle with my headphones on listening to book after book (currently it’s “Conversations with the Mann”) I close off and I manage to be alone in a city filled with people and noises, sites and smells. I am both a part of it and yet removed voluntarily from it. As I sit in a hospital room holding my infant daughter asleep in my arms, there are other babies, nurses, parents, alarms and a cacophony of other noises all around us, but somehow the rest of the world melts away and it’s just the two of us. Late at night I stay awake and it’s like I can’t sleep unless I have had my dose of solitude. There are days when I feel I could disappear “into the wild” and I think that for myself it could be incredible, but the problem is I care too much about people and about what’s going on in the world to leave it in that way. Instead I steal my time. I sometimes feel the need to slink off to my cabin in the woods, but for now there are more important places for me to be. Even Thoreau realized the need for friends and society and the balance of things social and solitary (he did have three chairs). I feel in some ways I am becoming more efficient in making moments count for more, but the trick I suppose is to take what each moment has to offer and let it feed you in whatever way it will.

When I was in high school I befriended the chief custodian/maintenance person and amongst the many interesting conversations that we had there is one that I have never forgotten because what he said was so profound and it’s always amazing how he saw something in me that I had never really thought about. This was a man nearing retirement who had spent most of his working life in solitude. He worked in the schools for 30 plus years, but to most of the students he was invisible, a servant to clean up after them if they even gave it that much thought, but he actually liked it that way. He appreciated the solitude. It was my senior year and he asked what I was planning to do with my life. I told him I was planning on going into the ministry and though to that point we had never talked about faith or anything like it, he laughed and said, “it figures.” I couldn’t leave it at that, so I asked him to explain and he told me about his best friend who became a monk. He said that he had never met someone so thoughtful, intelligent and comfortable with them self as this friend and that I had always reminded him of that friend so it seemed only natural that I would be going that way too. He talked about the ability to be present in every moment so that if you were with him you always felt like you were the most important thing to him, and when he was alone he understood that was a way to be important to himself in the same way he made other people feel when he was with them. This deep understanding of the need for solitude and the way it can feed you along with the desire to offer a sense of importance to others resonated with me completely. I won’t say that I am as good at it as he was trying to give me credit for, but I will say it’s a goal that I have been conscious of ever since.

I guess the point is that appreciating solitude doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate being with people too; in fact it can make you better at really being with people. I don’t like crowds or large groups, but I care about people. I need solitude and it is where I perhaps thrive the most, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone to walk with and talk with too.