How often are we left alone with ourselves? When was the last time we were truly alone, how long did we not say a single word? No, we are not alone when we watch TV at home, when we can, if we wish, dial a phone number and hear a familiar voice. And not even when we feel ourselves in the middle of a huge city as if in a desert. We are truly alone when we ourselves are looking for loneliness, we want it.
Our desire for privacy may express protest or resentment, or it may be a manifestation of secret desires or expectations addressed to other people.
SOMETIMES WE ARE LOOKING FOR LONELY, WISHING TO MEET WITH OURSELVES. WE ARE LOOKING FOR THE UNKNOWN SELF, “ANOTHER” FOR OURSELVES.
But there is another search for loneliness: when a person is looking for a meeting with himself. Not the “me” whom we know very well, whom we are looking for and find in the assessments and judgments of other people addressed to us. No, we are looking for ourselves unknown, “other” for ourselves. I remember the feeling of dismay and anxiety I experienced when I first went to the mountains alone in my youth. Did I want to make sure that I could be alone with myself, not looking for my reflection in the eyes of others, without their support? Or did I want to know if I could bear myself and discover something new in myself? I remember well that the joy of the inner discoveries that happened in the first days of the trip was mixed with gradually increasing anxiety. By the seventh day, she was already clearly felt as a physical force pushing me towards people. It was in Svaneti. Having made a compromise with myself, I moved lower, to the bank of a small mountain river, two kilometers from which there was a country road. Every day I climbed a rock overlooking the road and spent several hours in this shelter for the sole purpose of hearing the sound of a truck in the distance, anticipating its approach, meeting it with a beating heart and following it with my eyes. Then I was sure that the anxiety that made me wait for hours for a rare car was connected with something unknown and frightening inside me. Maybe, left alone with nature, I was afraid to dissolve in it and lose myself? If so, through the truck, I instinctively touched the world of men in order to receive symbolic support from my father in my unconscious, at that time, very conflicting relationship with mother nature. That experience in Svaneti turned out to be the first step towards understanding that the point is not to “defeat” nature, to prove to her the right to independent existence, the right to live alone – “without a mother”, and not to merge become one with it, become a part of it. The point is to, relying on the strength of the father, gain the ability to live, accepting your inner nature and developing your “I”.
You don’t have to go to the mountains to meet yourself. Each of us needs these meetings. Not to clear the mind of thoughts and feelings, as in Buddhist meditation. Rather, in order to enrich your life with new meanings. Meanings that can only be found within yourself.