When we go it alone, we make our lives harder – less sane, unnecessarily painful. When we are alone, the receptors in our brains that register physical and emotional pain open, they magnify it. But when we give our attention a real demand to meet, those receptors close, turning down the volume on our suffering. Isolation opens the door to pain, and directed attention shuts it.
Solitude can be sublime when we use it right. Where we get in trouble is when we’re both alone and have nothing to do, aimless in the day and in life. Purpose doesn’t arise on its own. It’s a result, not a precursor, of giving our attention something to do, a way for it to structure itself. A goal. Without that, we look to screens to bring order to our minds, or drugs to forget we care. Then we don’t have to face depressing thoughts or motivate ourselves, but it’s a black hole, a lifetime of potent potential goes in and nothing comes out.
Our brain needs to concentrate. Not wants. Not would be nice. It needs complex demands. Sex and drugs are not complex, just animal nature under anesthetic. Lives built on pleasure, without skill or discipline, leave us confused and helpless. We have to learn to use our time alone better, stop trying to avoid life, and instead direct our attention at will so we can learn to enjoy being alive.
The antidote to hopelessness is creation. If we become totally dependent on screens to structure our days, we will lose control not just of our lives, but of our spirit. If we can’t direct attention naturally and pleasurably, unwanted thoughts and feelings will take over the mansion. We’ll be a blob of habitlessness. This is not good. We’ll be so sensitive that the wind will disturb us. Frightened all the time.
We seek out painful experiences because pain is better than emptiness. It gives our attention a job, a drama to exist in. It convinces us we have control as we struggle against the pain, but it also stokes the fires we start. We can’t control fire. Cause and effect doesn’t care what we believe. If our soul’s door is open to evil, buckle up; bad things are about to go down, strangling everything that matters on the way.
If we can’t come up with enough to keep ourselves engaged in our own life, this is our leading indicator that we have latent skill and life force that require great demands to satisfy. This is a calling, not a burden. It’s going to take more to sufficiently challenge us into good mental, emotional, and physical health. So do that, do more. Don’t give up and leave a conquering spirit trapped in a vital body to die a slow death by monotonous video.
We can’t expect anything, anything at all, to ever come from passive consumption. Isolation. Addiction. It won’t. Meaning comes from within and goes out. Meaninglessness comes from the outside in. What we’re doing when we’re alone is what we can control. Those decisions: the hinge our life swings on. Directing our consciousness at will, this is creativity.
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Solitude comes to us if we have within us the magic stone that attracts destiny.
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More Essays
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