If there is something that causes me unease, yet comfort at the same time it is the continuously reoccurring drive towards solitude. This feeling isn't new to me. I became aware of this phenomenon years ago, but the fact that I paradoxically feel at ease in this loneliness is new to me. And that feeling exactly is what I want to examine more closely.
A few days ago I came home late as usual. My head felt heavy. It was pleasant, I spend the night with a loved one. Still in ecstasy I sat down in the bus after I had said goodbye. When I'm tired I usually lose the ability to clearly formulate thoughts, so thoughts just plump upon me in a stream of consciousness. I was shocked at the first thought that occurred to me the moment I had left:
´´Finally. Solitude.´´
The empty feeling afterwards felt quite warm and inviting. Its embrace felt much needed also.
It got me thinking, philosophizing, I mean. There is a void, that I see as a place of comfort. A void people normally tend to avoid. Why is this void suddenly so attractive, when it ought to be avoided?
Depressed people often say that the void sucks them of energy, that they can;t take the emptiness of the néant. I, however, experienced it differently. That doesn't mean I don't share their sentiments or at least don't understand them.
Yet, what I want to present is another side to this feeling that people tend to refer to as 'loneliness', 'emptiness' or 'nothingness'. The ambiguous side of loneliness. The feeling that this state of melancholy is a warm blanket that protects me against any impression the world tries to make on me. Escapism in nihilism. Comfort in nihilism.
In this feeling of warmth and comfort I sense that I am careless and lazy. Solitude can be best described as an empty cabin in a far away country that feels inviting after having seen, heard and felt too much. You retreat from the chaos into silence.
Certainly, the silence surrounding you can drive you insane, but it can also serve as a means to process thoughts that have been impressed in your soul.
This being the first factor that drives me to solitude. My soul is impressed by too much.
Another factor that drives me back to solitude and with that back to writing (since I haven't written in months) is me feeling restricted. All these impressions I feel, new ones and old ones, are a lot to process. They pile up and need time and energy to be thoroughly examined.
This in itself is mind numbing, but it becomes even harder when you have no clear morality to measure these impression up against, so you can't judge the position they take inside your life. You're stuck and don't know what to do with them. Yet, time passes. Days go by. The world waits for no one.
So whether I make my choice or not, there is no eternal tomorrow waiting for me to take my time.
So in the stress of time there seem two options available. Either you make up your mind and just choose already. You can either do this by investing time into the choice you're going to make and hope you will be able to triumphantly rise in the end. Or you can just choose and see whatever comes out, while being indifferent to the results and thinking that choices are a form of game you play in life to pass time.
Another option is to look at the other side of the coin and again accept that the world will not wait for you and do nothing about it.
In other words, to solitude yourself, because in the end nothing of the choices you make will matter in the long term, because in the end nothing shall last.
Or as Persian existential poet Omar Khayyam gracefully said:
''There was a water drop, it joined the sea. A speck of dust, it was fused with earth; what of your entering and leaving this world? A fly appeared and disappeared.''
I can understand that option two and three can be condemned if you are a humanist or have a positive attitude towards life. There's nothing virtuous in neglecting the will to live and life itself. Yes, simply seeing life as a game is also a way of neglect. After all, it's you being your own enemy and destroying yourself in the process, one can reason. Not a rebellion against the world, since the world doesn't care. It's you rebelling against that part that you detest in the world. That's how Camus would reason.
Yet, then I think of Kierkegaard. It doesn't matter what we choose, because in the end we will regret it anyway.
Live, don't live, you'll regret it anyway. Love, don't love, you'll regret it anyway. Study, don't study, you'll regret it anyway. Job, no job. Regret. Friendship, solitude. Regret. Fuck him, don't fuck him. Regret.
Yes, Kierkegaard meant this in another way than I am presenting right now. To him knowing we're mortal, meant living to the fullest.
Morior, ergo sum. (I die, therefore I am.)
This is the only life you will get, this is the only chance for you to make mistakes. Love them. Since you won't be able to ever be mistaken again in the same exact way, in the same exact situation, with the exact same you.
Beautiful. What a beautiful way to turn something so fragile as life, something so uncertain as the freedom to choose into a manifestation of the self. As a way to take life with your bare hands and embrace it for the potential shithole it was, is and might become.
The problem however is, I am not Camus' Sysiphus. I am not Nietzsche's Übermensch.
I. Am. Sara.
Following whatever a philosopher said, simply for the sake of him saying it, doesn't fill my soul. I need more reason.
With this being said, I want to say that I do not wish to be an imitation of a philosopher. I wish to be a philosopher. How do I see it? Of course, inspired by other philosopher, but what is it I want? Nietzsche's position in what it means to be a philosopher is quite right in this sense. He said this.
Quote: ''The actual interest of the scholar, therefore, are generally in another direction - in the family, perhaps, in money-making, or in politics; it is, in fact, almost indifferent at what point of research his little machine is placed, and whether the hopeful young worker becomes a good philologist, a mushroom specialist, or a chemist; he is not characterized by becoming this or that. In the philosopher, on the contrary, there is absolutely nothing impersonal; and above all, hid morality furnishes a decided and a decisive testimony as to who he is, - that is to say, in what order the deepest impulses of his nature stand to each other.''
-Beyond Good and Evil, page 5
Being a philosopher means to be egocentric. It's also the only job that fully reflects the soul of the individual. In that sense, to philosophy is to exist.
Philosopha sum ergo cogito. I am a philosopher, therefore I think.
To come back to the main topic: the drive towards solitude. The third factor being pride.
Pride is a difficult state of mind, character trait, whatever you want to call it. Pride can be good. It protects you from mental harm. It can cause you transcend yourself, because you are confident enough that there is more in store for you.
Even the act of me writing this is a form of pride, I have something to say that's worth listening to. I can even say I am proud of my ability to formulate these thoughts.
However, would it be better to have no pride at all? Is there something negative to it that outweighs the positive? No pride can lead to nihilism. You have nothing worth maintaining nor anything to lose.
It also seems to me that having pride and arrogance is something that belongs to a philosopher. Do humble philosophers exist or is that a contradictio in terminis? If they exist, perhaps it's a philosopher ignorant of his or her own arrogance.
I, as a matter of fact, know that it is necessary for a philosopher to be certain over a few things. To such an extend that he or she wants to present it to the world as some new discovery the world didn't see, but the philosopher in question did. He or she knows better.
Doesn't that imply arrogance? Am I arrogant writing this? At least to the point that I feel that these words are worth writing down and remembering?
This, however, isn't the only way pride presents itself to me. It also coincides with restriction of the self.
Those two fall under the same main drive that bring me back to wanting solitude: Freedom.
It's amusing how such an empty word still has the power to drive us towards it. What I mean by that is that freedom as an abstract term doesn't carry any meaning outside our frame of reality. I can't point at it; even worse, every individual has an own interpretation of freedom.
Is my red your red? And is my freedom your freedom? The second question can immediately follow the first.
Solitude is also a form of freedom. Not freedom to of course, but freedom from. From humiliation, from labor, responsibilities, embarrassment, pain, studies, loss.
Let us all be free from! So I wish I could exclaim and make life easy. Yet, aside from being an empty word, it is also an ambiguous term.
Freedom from love, pleasure, laughter, warmth, friendship, improvement, encounters, evolution, transcendence. In this battle of overcoming yourself you will see that those words that seem to be polar opposites actually have the option to causally follow each other in a beautiful flux called life.
So in conclusion, what has writing this brought me? Am I closer to anything at all? Or did I just run in a circle?
I can fairly conclude it led to something. Something small, but significant in my eyes.
I have no answers on how to live life. I merely know the questions. At least I know what the inner battle is. That's what this stream of consciousness has brought me.
Thus again I am confronted by wanting two things at once, but wanting neither over all. Thus once again there is the phenomenon I can never seem to outrun,
Ambiguity.
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