AHSS The Gift of Years: Solitude (Lesson 25)

Carl Jung taught, “For a younger person, it is almost a sin and certainly a danger to be too much occupied with himself. But for the aging person it is the duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself. After having lavished it light upon the world, the sun withdraws its rays in order to illumine itself.” Carl Jung brought to human awareness the notion that life develops in stages, some of them more centered on the outside world, others of them focused almost entirely on interiority, on reflection on the search for meaning. The end stage of life, it seems, has something to do with making sense out of everything that has gone before it. It also requires the courage to brave the answers to questions about what happened to us and why, how we handled what happened to us and, most of all, what it means to us now.

This can only be done in the center of the soul and with brutal honesty. Now is the time to stop excusing ourselves. This is the time to drain the cross of life and to celebrate its victories over the self – even the victories unknown to those who think they know us best. Certainly, the ones that made new and better people out of us. That kind of thinking and reflection is only really done well when it is done alone, in solitude. All the people we have ever known, still very much alive in us, come back again to help us see where we have been, to understand what we have become, to help us chart what it will take to make these final years our best ones.

Aloneness is the new monastery of the elderly. Sometimes a conscious choice. There are a growing number of single people of all ages living alone now. In old age, however, aloneness is, more than likely, not chosen at all. It is simply thrust upon us. It brings with it none of the romantic images of cabins or beaches. Now it is only an empty house or a small apartment in the new housing complex for the elderly that has become so common with the rise of the nuclear family.

The problem with solitude is that we often confuse it with aloneness or isolation. Isolation means that we are cut off from the rest of the world by circumstances over which we have no control; people don’t respond to us, for instance, no matter how hard we try to make contact with them. We live outside the mainstream. We are too sick, lame, shy, angry, far away from people to have any kind of social life. Isolation is either separation or alienation from the world around us.

Solitude is chosen. It is the act of being alone to be with ourselves. We seek solitude for the sake of the soul. Solitude opens us to the wonders of a world without noise, clutter, and purged of the social whirl. At least for a while. At least long enough to immerse ourselves in the balm of simply being. Then the silence outside ourselves enables us to go inside ourselves. It’s in the center of the soul where the unspoken in us runs deep. Here are the ideas we long ago refused to allow ourselves to think and yet could never not think. In solitude we have the opportunity to take them out, turn them over in our mind, look at them, own them or disown them once and for all.

Is the old anger worth it? Was the loss really a loss in the long run? If we didn’t do what we wanted to do, in what way did we grow instead? It’s in solitude where we come to peace with ourselves and the life that is behind us now. We are beyond it now, not able to be hurt by it now, no longer humiliated by it now. Whatever we have done, wherever we have been in life, we are what we are because of it. Stronger because of it, perhaps.

There is life to be lived in the last years that ought not to end infected by what went on before this. We have an obligation now to live well with the people around us who are making this new life possible. We owe them the best we have. And the best that is in us is what is undefiled by the past. Are we living now the happiest way we can in the circumstances we’re in? Solitude is what enables us to illuminate for ourselves whatever it is in us that is making that impossible.

Sister Joan Says: A burden of these years is that we fail to understand that solitude is the gift that comes naturally to those who take the time and the space to explore their core. A blessing of these years is that solitude is their natural state, the gift of reflection that makes the present a contented place to be.

1. “Solitude is chosen. It is the act of being alone in order to be with ourselves. We seek solitude for the sake of the soul,” Sister Joan writes. Is choosing solitude one of your regular or daily spiritual practices? If yes, discuss or journal about what value it has for you. If not, what are the obstacles that prevent you from choosing solitude.