When I was in college, I wrote an essay about Emily, about why I believed she was such a talented poet. I concluded that her depth of insight came from all the hours she spent alone with no company but her own soul, free (or forced) to plunge bravely into whatever fears or facts she discovered therein. The deeper she probed, the more universal were her observations, as she peeled back the layers of the human experience. She probably devoted proportionally more time to thought and self-reflection than any other woman of her day.
Sometimes, when I am feeling dramatic, I imagine I am Emily, sitting on my bed with my legs curled under me, writing frantically. I stop occasionally to gaze at the fog and the thin, dark lines of trees, arrange my face in a pensive expression. I wonder if I look the part. I haven’t written any poems, though—or anything else that could be considered remotely brilliant. But maybe, if I sit here long enough—a few years—some wisdom might emerge. Or maybe not.
There are many reasons why Emily chose to live apart from society, why she only published a handful of poems during her lifetime, and why she spent the vast majority of her hours locked in her bedroom. I don’t pretend to fully understand the psychology behind her decisions and I won’t get into the many theories of her personality here. But I do think I know a little bit of that love for solitude, and it makes sense to me that poetry could spring from the wells of thought that can be found there, when the mind is given long enough to settle.
Many people fear solitude. They fear what memories or voices may reverberate in the emptiness. Or they simply dislike it, uncomfortable with the lack of stimulation, the quiet, the dark and tangled webs of untouched emotion. But for Emily and I—and for many other people, I imagine—solitude is not a punishment. It is a blissful escape.
I like the quiet expanses of space that surround me when I’m alone in the house. I like walking up the stairs to the office where I work, hearing few noises but the soft murmur of voices or the tap-tap of fingers on keyboards. Silence is comforting to me, blankets me in like fresh snowfall on a rooftop. Sometimes when I’m driving I intentionally turn off the music or whatever audio book I happen to be listening to and let silence fill the cab of my van. I like to give my mind my undivided attention every now and then, to see what bubbles to the surface.
Ironically—because so often we use words to describe our experience in the mind that signify confinement (trapped, stuck, lost, etc)—our own heads can be places of absolute freedom and spaciousness. Emily sometimes described her mind as an expanse wider than the sky, big enough to encompass the whole universe. Physically, she may have limited herself to a small bedroom, but mentally she had boundless room to roam. Because unlike any physical place, the mind is not finite; it is ever capable of expansion, and though it is familiar, it offers an allure of mystery and the undiscovered. It is—or can be—the best of both the real and the imaginary. These past few months I have had more time for solitude than probably ever in my life, and I have found this to be resoundingly true.
But there is a dark side to my pleasure, one that even Emily felt. (As I'm sure all you extroverts are eager to tell me.) The benefits of solitude come at a price, and I'm beginning to wonder if it is not too high, no matter how much I may enjoy it.
I have found that the more time I spend alone, reading or writing or driving, the more of an effort it becomes to re-engage with society, with those complex and unpredictable creatures we call humans. The more I retreat into my own mind, the more comfortable I become there, like a little church mouse setting up house, arranging everything just so. In silence, I am able to let the dust settle, and I am reluctant to leave that still and cocooned place. It represents a place of security for me, like a rabbit den safely underground the chaos of the outside world. Like I said earlier, solitude for me is an escape. And many things in life are not meant to be avoided.
When I am alone, I only have to deal with one person: myself. And while sometimes that is no easy task, it is certainly less complicated than dealing with any number of additional personalities. It's harder for me to hurt people when I'm alone, and it's harder for them to hurt me. For a while I can ignore all the pain occurring around me and pretend everything is just fine.
It doesn't take a college grad to tell you that this world is full of crap. So much pain and suffering, so much struggle. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by it. I'm not sure why I like being alone so much—as least part of it has to do with my personality—but part of it is also a weakness and a desire to avoid discomfort. When I'm under the impression that everything is fine—within my relationships and within the souls of others—I'm under no obligation to do anything about it. I don't think this consciously, but when I stop to examine it, that's probably what's really going on: At least part of my preference for solitude stems from a fear of either the helplessness or the tough responsibility one feels when engaging with those who are hurting.
As anyone who has ever interacted with a human being knows, this is no way to properly live, and I realize that. Sometimes my introverted self gets carried away. It takes a meaningful, personal interaction to snap me out of my stupor. I visited some of my friends from college this past weekend, and I felt something in my soul wake up. Yes, there is a kind of freedom that comes with solitude, but there is also a kind of freedom that can be found only in the company of close friends. You can be totally yourself when you are alone, but it is much more satisfying to be totally yourself among people who can affirm you in that.
The number one thing I miss out on when I choose to spend long hours in my own company is the chance to grow in humility, and by that I mean thinking of myself less and others more. I wrote about this back in October, I think, in a post titled “My Bonsai Tree Life.” Obviously, it's one of those lessons I will continue learning my entire life. It's seems that every time I come back from a visit to Chicago or have a deep conversation with a friend I am inspired to devote more energy to caring for others and actively participating in their lives. And then I always fail in some way to live up to this goal, and I retreat back within myself.
I wonder sometimes how Emily Dickinson survived years and years of self-imposed isolation. How did she retain compassion for others? How was she not driven crazy by her own thoughts? Or perhaps she was. Some of her poetry does suggest a deeply troubled soul. Still, I have a deep respect for Emily, and knowing my own introverted tendencies, I won't judge her for her choices.
But I've decided that for me, art springs from a place somewhere between these two modes of being. I must be both a social creature and a private one. I must experience the world but also have time to reflect on it. One without the other produces dead art, either too lofty and ungrounded or cheap and unfiltered. There is a delicate balance between these, one that I am still trying to figure out. I suppose that's how all of life is, a back and forth shifting of ideas as we teach ourselves how to live in this strange world.
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