...it is only too easy to talk about solitude as something highly desirable, to be sought after, when in fact for many lonely people (and that will almost certainly include all of us at some point in our lives) that will simply not be true. Then being by oneself is neither beautiful nor idyllic. Solitude and loneliness are very different things. We may find ourselves alone, but not from choice. We may find ourselves alone when we long to be part of a family, isolated when what we most long for is to belong.
We live in a world that is full of lonely people. Loneliness is one of the many new diseases of our century. We are told that if we walk down Fifth Avenue, New York and take a count we will find that eight out every then people are crying inside.
But to be able to be alone is a very different thing, and it is probably something that we all need to learn. Perhaps once again the Rule has something to say to us. For here we see the necessity of standing utterly alone before God, totally open. "It is a gift, a rare gift, to be happy utterly alone," Paul Joes said after several months of his stay at Snowmass, as something of the power of that place began to work in him, and as he observed in the Trappists around him the gift of what he called "the hermit heart". It is essntially being able to live creatively with oneself.
From Living with Contradictions, Reflections on the Rule of St. Benedict
by Esther de Waal
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