Double Solitude | Hacker News Reader

Double Solitude

newyorker.com

210 pointspepys42 comments

I had never considered the difference between solitude and loneliness before. His words helped me understand that they are fundamentally different.

"Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over. I am grateful when solitude returns."

I went camping in an area without cell or internet service a few weeks ago, and this helps me understand the incredible experience I had. It was a strong dose of solitude, which had been missing in my day-to-day city life.

>I had never considered the difference between solitude and loneliness before.

I had but only after I stumbled across this quote on the internet, one of my favourite:

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone. - Paul Tillich

Such a wild thought to me. I NEED my solitude. It's always been such an important part of my life.

To clarify: I am not a native English speaker and I hadn't thought about the words themselves before seeing that quote. In German, there is no clear distinction like that. Of course, I also need my solitude.

In German we have the two adjectives "einsam" (lonely) and "allein" (alone), and I guess the second one goes with solitude. So the concepts are there.

Hm, I guess that's true. I just didn't look at them the same way because to me, both feel more like they refer to loneliness.

Dutch also has "eenzaam" (lonely) en "alleen" (single, singular), but neither really confer the same meaning as "solitude". The closest expression in Dutch is probably "op zichzelf", but that still describes a fact, while solitude (feels to me like it) expresses an emotion.

I define solitude as capacity to entertain myself with or without outside distraction or people.

Loneliness is a phobia of what's inside of us. It is a desperation to seek entertainment in outside stimulus.

I have gone through year long solitary confinement. It is life changing.

>I have gone through year long solitary confinement. It is life changing.

Voluntary or involuntary? I suspect there could be a drastic difference in the effect between those two.

Involuntary.

How long did it take to come to acceptance with the fact that you were being forced to stay that way?

I am still into phase of accepting it. I took help from two therapists and read books by Hermann Hesse and Anthony Starr to establish sense of authenticity and reliance in my life. I would say it is all about finding an original voice every new day. Keeping mind active and sharp while discarding old believes just like old cloths. A person who has multiple voices and an enriched mind can never feel alone.

I like to share this quote which always had made be good about my experiences. I know it extreme but this voice isn't for everyone.

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”

― Hermann Hesse

Whilte the author's reflections are incredibly deep and worthwhile on their own, what struck me most about this article was just the tremendous quality of the writing. Is the recipe to being able to produce writing like this simply to become a voracious consumer of similarly-excellent writing?

Lots of reading, lots of writing, and a healthy dose of inborn talent. Also, the New Yorker has excellent editors.

An editor gave an advice for the aspiring writer once: read more books.

—Will it help?

—Sure. The moore time you spend reading the less time you will have for writing crap.

That's not the reason though. Writing crap is actually what makes you write awesome stuff. Reading is a way to see what other people do and learn from their crap and awesome stuff, if you take the opportunity to really take things in beside the story it contains.

I mean the guy was the poet laureate of the United States once... =]

If I'm interpreting the first 5 paragraphs correctly, the author has been writing continuously since about 1950.

Before that even. I bought Essays After Eighty linked below and he began writing poetry when he was 15 which was around 1944. He was US Poet Laureate in 2006. An incredible body of work.

"Consumer",in this context, is a really bad choice of word.

Wow, and I thought I was the only one. Something has always rubbed me the wrong way when people talk about "consuming" media. I get the sense they're trying to push some kind of agenda about the sociological evils of newspapers or pornography or whatever.

Perhaps the reason it's an off-putting word in this context is that it usually has the connotation of using up its object. Generally when you consume something it's no longer there for someone else, an attribute that's not usually the case with a written work.

Agreed. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much packed so concisely and plainly, without sacrificing style.

That's pretty much the idea espoused in _Steal Like An Artist_. Read and write a lot. Pick your heroes. Sponge up their stuff. Make more stuff.

"And to speak of solitude again, it becomes clearer and clearer that fundamentally this is nothing that one can choose or refrain from. We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. But how much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization. It will, of course, make us dizzy; for all points that our eyes used to rest on are taken away from us, there is no longer anything near us, and everything far away is infinitely far. A man taken out of his room and, almost without preparation or transition, placed on the heights of a great mountain range, would feel something like that: an unequalled insecurity, an abandonment to the nameless, would almost annihilate him. He would feel he was falling or think he was being catapulted out into space or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a colossal lie his brain would have to invent in order to catch up with and explain the situation of his senses. That is how all distances, all measures, change for the person who becomes solitary; many of these changes occur suddenly and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, unusual fantasies and strange feelings arise, which seem to grow out beyond all that is bearable. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us." [etc]

From Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet. To continue reading: http://www.carrothers.com/rilke8.htm

Just be sure to make a backup of your brain before you let your brain invent those fantasies. It'll be OK.

I know a similar story from a documentary of a naturalist guy named Richard Louis "Dick" Proenneke. He lived in Alska for more than thirty years. His life there is equally inspiring because he never stopped learning and honing his skills.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437806/

http://www.aloneinthewilderness.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2-ms5OZKC4

Dick Proenneke is such an inspiration. My band even wrote a song about him.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6IwW64zdcdAKdimJRRKjV1

A book titled "Essays After Eighty" by Donald Hall: https://www.amazon.com/Essays-After-Eighty-Donald-Hall/dp/05...

Thank you for doing the research I was just about to do. What delicious writing.

I've just started "The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon" after discovering the authors work here. I had to take a break after the first chapter, it is intensely sad. I don't have the right vocabulary to describe his writing. This man truly loved his wife.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B003JTHWIC

How wonderful those twenty years must have been.

They had such an amazing life! They were completely dedicated to their work. They attained a perfect equilibrium where, by perfectly complementing each other, they managed to focus on their work. The other spouse was never a hindrance in one's work. Such a rapport is so hard to achieve. Nearly all couples are bogged down by some form of family issue (raising kid, problematic relatives etc.). In fact, he faced similar issue in his first marriage which ultimately broke down. It would be so beautiful to have a partner like that. Coming from a third world country where 'starting a family' (which definitely includes having kids) is everything, I am extremely lured by this prospect as I know how difficult it is to achieve here.

Independent of our preference for soltitude we can miss a person in our life, or the abstract concept of that idea. It's not really exclusive.

For instance I can sit in my living room, happy that no unknown people are around me, while at the same time missing to be with that special someone. Maybe being with other people would reduce that feeling of emptyness, but more likely than not it would just be irritating.

I don't like the word lonely. Neither does it express what one actually misses (parents? lover? just not being alone in the room?) nor does it really tell the truth. What he has should be called something like withoutherness, not loneliness.

"Un seul être vous manque et tout est dépeuplé" Lamartine, L'isolement

One person is missing and the whole world is deserted.

Documentary about Donald Hall & Jane Kenyon at their New Hampshire farm:

https://vimeo.com/33656887

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