Our Thought Life

taken in the Chalice Garden, Glastonbury, England ©A.Rutherford

Being alone is something we are not accustomed to in this day and age, and solitude is not something that we consider to be desirable or useful. I wonder how many of us ever talk to our children about the delight of being alone.  Or provide opportunities for them to experience “set apart” time and give them guidance in how to use this time beneficially to gain self-reflection or practice “contentment with small means.”   I think not.  And that is a huge failure on the part of modern parents.

Consider this quote from Indira Ghandi: “We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”  Then think about how modern young people, and adults as well, rush to fill any void in their time with almost anything, even if it’s destructive, because they have never learned to appreciate stillness or to be vibrantly alive in repose.  In fact, for most people this idea no longer “computes.”

Of course. if we are alone not by our own choice, but through the choice of others, we may very well experience loneliness, or even self-pity, fear, and angst.  If we are thinking negatively, being alone can be likened to being outcast, and so we avoid it.  But on a smaller scale, we moderns also avoid like the plague the very possibility of being bored.  However, for a culture that considers boredom the kiss of death, our lives are often filled with ennui, and boredom is our great national complaint.

Whenever students have asked me if I ever get bored, I smile and tell them, “No, I have a self-amusing thought-life.”  And I don’t mean one that is necessarily humorous or fun.  I have a rich interior life with rooms filled with many treasures stored away, which I can visit at any time.  I can place myself back in a green field leaning against a stone wall, listening to the rhythmic chewing of a cow slowing munching grass, feeling the soft breeze blow my hair against my cheek.  I can pull my light jacket closer around me against the slight chill of this April day on the west coast of Ireland.  And I can do this and enjoy the experience again and again because I paid attention that day ten years ago when it was happening.  I memorized the experience, so to speak, and can call it up at any time and live it again, even while waiting for someone in a crowded mall if I need to.  Or I can revisit a great book I’ve read, or think about a poem I’ve memorized, or see a painting in my mind, or recall a pleasant conversation with a friend.

But I was raised in the country and I spent long periods of time lying on my back, watching the clouds change patterns in the sky.  I had early “training” in the art of reflection, even before I knew what reflection was *smile*

So when we are alone, we can choose between contentment or angst.  And when we emerge from our aloneness, we can be better people.  Of course, modern thinking rejects the idea of contentment or grace as a product of solitude.  But listen to Lord Byron in this verse from “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (Canto III. XC):

“Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self:  it is a tone,
The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eternal harmony.”

In solitude, where we are least alone! How wonderful is that?

We tune our souls to the Eternal harmony in our periods of Solitude.

A reading from Anam Cara, by John O’Donohue on our thought life:

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