To Be Lonely

Share/Save/Bookmark

To Be Lonely
by rosie is roxy is roshan
30-Jan-2009
 

When I was writing my recent blog Zionazis, about the formative experience I had which had led me to become a non-Zionist, I thought I’d google to find something to use as a quote, something about how difficult and yet how necessary it is to stand alone. Because that experience had made me feel profoundly alone.

I didn't quite find what I was looking for but I did come across a quote from Rainer Marie Rilke on the necessity of being lonely if one is to be able to fully love. Rilke is generally considered to have been the greatest German-language poet of the first half of the twentieth century. He was not a prolific poet, he found that a protacted gestation period, often years, was necessary for his experiences to be assimilated and transmuted into poetry. For him both life and poetry were a slow process, to evolve at their own pace, meaningful in their depth, not breadth. The excerpt comes from a very famous collection known as Letters to a Young Poet which are exactly that, replies he’d written in 1903-4 to a series of letters to him from a young unknown poet. .

For myself, I’ve recently known loneliness in its darkest recesses imaginable, so dark I couldn't even recount them here, at least not yet.. I'm not quite sure yet if it's taught me to love more fully, I think so, time will tell. But I do know it's helped me to be less afraid.

_______________________________

The Seventh Letter,

April, 1904

Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance. We can be sure of very little, but the need to court struggle is a surety that will not leave us. It is good to be lonely, for being alone is not easy. The fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it.

To love is also good, for love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test. It is that striving for which all other striving is merely preparation. For that reason young people - who are beginners in everything - cannot yet love; they do not know how to love. They must learn it. With their whole being, with all strengths enveloping their lonely, disquieted heart, they must learn to love - even while their heartbeat is quickening. However, the process of learning always involves time set aside for solitude.Thus to love constantly and far into a lifespan is indeed aloneness, heightened and deepened aloneness for one who loves.

Love does not at first have anything to do with arousal, surrender, and uniting with another being - for what union can be built upon uncertainty, immaturity and lack of coherence? Love is a high inducement for individuals to ripen, to strive to mature in the inner self, to manifest maturity in the outer world, to become that manifestation for the sake of another. This is a great, demanding task; it calls one to expand one´s horizon greatly.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Recently by rosie is roxy is roshanCommentsDate
Dangerous People, Dangerous Games
3
Aug 19, 2009
What Yeggia Once Told Me About Iran
11
Aug 16, 2009
Sedaa am
17
Aug 15, 2009
more from rosie is roxy is roshan
 
Monda

rosie joon, sit with your loneliness while you can...

by Monda on

or let it sit with you deeply. Eckhart Tolle has a thing or two about the power of being truly present in your loneliness. If you have time, look up his "Power of NOW". Nonresistance doesn't necessarily mean doing nothing. All it means is that any "doing" becomes nonreactive. Remember the wisdom underlying the practice of Eastern martial arts: don't resist the opponent's force. Yield to overcome.

Thank you for introducing me to Rilke.


rosie is roxy is roshan

Thank you

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

for the beautiful comments.

Roxane


capt_ayhab

Ms. rosie is roxy is roshan

by capt_ayhab on

Ever since I have started commenting in Iranian.com, I have come across many of your posts. I can't say that I agree with all of your comments, but I can proudly say that I have learned to admire your candor and your simple, pure language of honesty.

The piece you have posted is awesome to say the least.  Please never stop sharing your writings and your wisdom.

Respectfully

capt_ayhab [-YT]


javaneh29

Rosie azizam ..

by javaneh29 on

a very thought provoking post and your honesty is something I have come to respect you for.

Aziz, life goes in cycles ... welll this is my experience anyway and what I observe about the lives of others. '....... Have you read Johnathan living seagull ??? Im sure you have but i fully recommend you re read it. It is a very poignant reflections about survival and lonliness. There was a quote in there somewhere. that went something like this ' problems never come without  a gift in its  hands for you'.  I cant find my copy at the moment but that was the sentiment. I never forget this when I face the  problems of life.

Its strange isn't it that you can be lonlier in a relationship than you can be out of one. Love is hard... the hardest thing in the world sometimes, beit love for oneself or for another, whatever the relationship.

Thanks for making me think about this anew. I think despite having been through one hell of a life(!) I am the luckiest person I know. I have my husband and although we go through patches when we are dis-connected, our love is something I have faith in 100%. ButRosie Jann, it wasn't always like this for me and it won't always be like it is now for you either.

Evolve azizam. Now, this time of aloneness... its part of your life process.

Ghorbunet shoma ... I understand where you are coming from.

Javaneh


Nazy Kaviani

For the light that shines, Roshan

by Nazy Kaviani on

My body is surrounded

My soul feels lonely

 

Arms wrapped around my shoulders

My soul stands solitary

 

My ear hears whispers

My soul sits in silence

 

My mouth utters words

My soul keeps quiet

 

My body goes to celebrations

My soul stays behind

 

Thinking

Gathering

Providing

Nourishing

 

Me.


rosie is roxy is roshan

You're right, Doctor,

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

Nature.

I'll try to remember that. Nature.

And I hope that my friends who are reading this who are lonely too remember it also. Everything in nature is difficult, everything strives to be completely itself, no matter what.And everything in nature protects. Nature is life itself.

Thank you so much.


Free Spirit

Actually

by Free Spirit on

if I may say so. Zion is a woman.


Zion

Believe me

by Zion on

It's all just about getting some. Including this new benevolent understanding act below this one.
That's it. I'm outta here.


default

nature

by Dr. Parviz Torkeh (not verified) on

I enjoyed this blog. Regarding your very last paragraph

"It's deep. But it's very hard to find that inner space these days with all the cacaphony, speed, and CONSUMPTION of everything including sex and turnstile relationships, of modern life."

Nature perhaps can help shield lots of interferences with our loneliness. It will protect us against lots of noises.

-------------

p.s. whoever this scum bag Zion is, I have seen worse, but he is a runner up. He is yet to offer one interesting sentence in any blog. His shameless comment here was despicable. Nobody is here to get a piece.


rosie is roxy is roshan

Parviz /Free, others

by rosie is roxy is roshan on

Free, Z. has ample reason to be angry with me now, and please just let it lie.

Parviz, others, you have to remember that Rilke lived at a time when he did not have the "benefit" of the sexual revolution. He was very progressive and like most visionary poets a bit prophetic. He sensed the coming Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, the winds of change. He knew women would be liberated and he knew that relationshps would be redefined. In his day it was a very revolutionary statement socially and psychologically to postulate that one must first become oneself before embarking on a committed relatonship. At that time people just married, and married young, and had families because they were supposed to.

I think one of the problems these days it that because of the sexual revolution people become sexually intimate with others as a matter of course. Then they get involved emotionally in relationships because of the physical intimacy, not the other way around. Despite all the talk about how people (especially men) no longer need that emotional involvement and can have sex and move on to greener pastures, it is not true. Sane people tend to get involved with the people they sleep with. So people due to a biological urge (intensely ccompunded by the equation of the media of sex with consumption, of the "good life" which constantly stimulates people sexually) people constantly seek sex. And then, boom, they are involved in a relationship. With someone half the time you shouldn't be with. And so you never have time to find out who YOU are.

Rilke was progressive, he rejected marriage before one knew oneself.  (in 1904! In GERMANY! ). At the same time sex was not easily accessible, except with prostitutes.

So when he talked about alone, and loneliness and solitude he really meant it.

It's deep.

But it's very hard to find that inner space these days with all the cacaphony, speed, and CONSUMPTION of everything ,including sex and turnstile relationships, of modern life.

Yet there come those times...when we are alone anyway despite all the frenetic movement...and we should learn to value those times to deepen and enrich our self-knowledge. Often real suffering is involved, when you lose someone you love. But then you have to say well WHY did I lose the person I loved. Because neither of us knew yet how to love fully...and sit with it and feel the pain, and all the doors that pain can open...and you become fuller, richer. That's what's happening to me.

But it ain't easy.


Free Spirit

Well, at least you....

by Free Spirit on

acknowledge it.

You must also understand that to some on this thread it is not an attempt as you put "to get some" but rather an attempt to gain a deeper understanding into the need to be alone for a period of time.

It is not the same for everyone.


Zion

No, not really necessary

by Zion on

but it didn't hurt either, all this, like everything else, being dramatic spiel just to get some. ;-)


Free Spirit

Really now....

by Free Spirit on

was that comment really necessary?

This blog is not even about politics.

You only posted it because you don't seem to like the author.

This blog is actually relevant to others on this thread.


Zion

[yawn]

by Zion on

[more yawn]


Free Spirit

I agree......

by Free Spirit on

yet at times one can get so used to it. It becomes difficult to come forth from loneliness and into a fulfilling relationship.

Might lack the leap of faith to do so. 


I Have a Crush on Alex Trebek

Until you know yourself, you can't love anyone fully

by I Have a Crush on Alex Trebek on

Loneliness can provide so many opportunities for self-discovery. We have to grow on our own before we can grow with another person. Otherwise, you become dependent. Personal strength can definitely come from this stage in anyone's life. 


default

good point

by Dr. Parviz Torkeh (not verified) on

and it makes sense. The problem is that it would be nice to also have a physical person to love. A lot of time love in loneliness is a hope and reinforcing dream. Although beautiful and useful, one would be so lucky to actually find a person as well.

Do you like checking out foreign movies at the library? I find them very nourishing during loneliness. Much better than Hollywood movies or tv.


Free Spirit

You'll Never Walk Alone........

by Free Spirit on