Dunedain77 Offline

Musings on Solitude

I was thinking about solitude last night and what it means to me. Solitude for me is a conscious effort to be alone with my mind. It must be absolute like a meditative trance where nothing and no one can interfere. Sadly I often think of the misconceptions that many people have about solitude that they confuse it with loneliness. In the end it is just you and your own mind.
For me solitude is a condition that is sought for self-awareness and self-evaluation. I feel bad for my friends and family when they try to join me on my sojourns. They just don't understand that their presence while soothing is detrimental to my purpose. For I must stand alone before the harshest judge of all...myself. Nothing and no one is a harsher judge of you than you. And when a friend or loved one is with you, you tend to use their presence as a shield, and that just does not allow for growth. For you must stand and be scoured by your own self-loathing to come to terms with your position in life. You must bear witness to all of your memories and take the scathing rage you have over poor decisions and an inability to read a situation better. For no matter how embarrassing it is for you to hear the laughter of others, the scorn you have for yourself cuts deeper. And as you burn your way through your memories and each one smashes your delusional ego you come to the realization of the truth of the matter. That there was nothing you could have done to change was has happened, and all you can do is live with the consequences.
At other times you're coming to make a life altering choice and you need that time to talk to you the person who knows you the best, YOU. As you sit alone in your own thoughts you ask yourself if the change is truly worth it and can you handle it. If you are patient enough to stay in your solitude you get the right answer, for again you must push through your delusional ego and see to the truth of yourself. And again that is a hard thing to do with friend or lover next to you for they feed you ego that you can do a thing when deep down past the egotistical bravado you know your not yet ready. And often times during the earliest stages of the change you must return to that solitude as a way of reinforcing the choice that you have made.
In the end the difference between solitude and loneliness is the fact that one is the choice of the individual and the other is trust upon them by others. Although Solitude is good for mental health the other is a soul destroying condition that I will delve into at a later date.