An outstanding philosopher, culturologist Grigory Pomerants on how to survive loneliness, not to let difficult circumstances break oneself and about the first step that needs to be taken for love to come into our lives.
About the work of love
The poet Rilke said strange words in the last century about the work of love. The beginning of this unusual work is making room for love, affirming faith in its reality. The first and necessary condition for love to come is overcoming the power of one’s ego, obsession with oneself, liberation from the feeling of one’s own superiority over others. What is important is the willingness to put yourself in second place in life, leaving the first to another. At least to God. Or the greatest geniuses of mankind. The desire to excel, to constantly be the main and right is the destroyer of love. The ability to give in, the fear of offending another is what helps her to be born.
It is most difficult for gifted people to free themselves from the power of the ego. After all, every gift contains a temptation: you feel talented and offended that you are not recognized and underestimated. This also applies to those gifted by nature with intelligence, beauty, the gift of leading … To make room for love in your heart, you will have to overcome pride, focus on your “I”, your talent, exclusivity, obsession with a career and any external result.
If love is more important to you than an external result, if you decide to sacrifice your primacy, the right to have the last word, pride, in order to acquire something incomparably greater, then act. To begin with, try one day to consciously take the modest place of the second – in a conversation, argument, relationship, friendship. Thus, you will take the first step on the road to love.
Read more:
- The work of love
About music
It gives me great inner satisfaction to listen to Bach or Mozart. Although this was not given to me from birth, it was not in the traditions of the family … The process of being drawn into classical music was very complex and long, it lasted until the age of thirty something. And, oddly enough, the camp helped me. Because there was a limitation of all possibilities – except for the ability to listen to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies on the radio. And in the frost of 35 degrees – the Arkhangelsk region is still the region – I walked back and forth with another person, I didn’t even know his name, I just found another music lover. And so we walked back and forth between the barracks, until we listened to the entire symphony from the loudspeaker on the pole in this frost. Then, having returned to Moscow, I could easily move on… Music is also good because it can be replicated, because it almost does not deteriorate on a good disc. And that means you can go to bed, putting on a Mozart concerto, and fall asleep to the divine sounds of his music.
About happiness
Happiness is not a substitute for life, but life itself in its depths. With all its troubles, but also with the strength that this depth gives.
Happiness is unstable, and every day you have to fight for it. The pace of civilization cannot be changed, but it is in our will – I would even say that it is our duty – to be able to be happy at the slightest opportunity, in the worst conditions, in any gap of joy, and to share this joy with people, and not a gloomy look and breakdowns of the sick nerves. The keys to happiness lie in the word itself – “participation”, the collection of all parts, the integrity of being. In contrast to fate – “y-part”, being squeezed into some part of life, like in a casemate.
At any turn of fate, you can always snatch hours of contemplation, a creative state, fullness, joy, suffering and thought from her. These gaps must be found. One of my friends gets up at 5 am. And he devotes one morning hour only to himself. In a way, he is meditating. In fact, he is trying to comprehend – himself, what is happening around. Another friend of mine, an accountant, also gets up early and reads history books to understand what country he lives in. It is not necessary for an accountant to work. But for life – it is necessary and even very. Such pauses of contemplation allow us to stop our run a little and wait for our soul to keep up with us.
About loneliness
Complaining about loneliness, we most often want to say, shout to someone: “I am abandoned, abandoned!” And we strive for each other in order to appease this feeling of abandonment, to fill the void. We run to others, but in fact – from ourselves.
And as a result, we find ourselves in that spiritual tightness, dependence, which then turns into enmity and hatred …
Yes, it is difficult to be alone, alone only with yourself and at the same time feel full, whole, happy. But in the life of every person there are certainly years of loneliness, sometimes even for many years. How to get through them?
To our named daughters, my wife and I often repeat the ancient truth: if you strongly desire only personal happiness, it will run away like a sunbeam. It is worth wishing for something else – your own fulfillment. One must try to fill one’s life not only through the other (others), but also through everything beautiful – nature, music, art. And in people – to learn to peer, to let them through your soul. Following this inner fullness, a real meeting will come: after all, in order to truly get closer, you need to have something to share.
Gregory of Pomerania – philosopher and culturologist (1918–2013). Born in Vilna, graduated from IFLI, in 1941 he volunteered for the front. In 1949 he was convicted of anti-Soviet propaganda and rehabilitated in 1958. Author of many philosophical works. His autobiography, Notes of the Ugly Duckling, was first published in 1995 by the Moskovsky Rabochiy publishing house.