Solitude of Self

 

I don’t want to convince you of anything.

I don’t want to make you understand how I see things.

I don’t want you to think I have something you don’t.

I don’t want to have to be something I am not in order for you to like me or believe in me.

I used to. When I am unconscious, I still do.

What I do want to be is in relationship with you, and to do that means we each must be who we really are.

How can relationship ever really happen when we are pretending?

 

Falsity breeds separation.

We’ve been well taught how to be something we are not. And, the invitation is always here to drop all of that and simply be what we are.

I used to think it would be lonely here in this solitude of self. I now know it is full and rich.

 

Rilke wrote this:

“And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.”

 

May we be these ‘two solitudes who protect and border and greet each other’ – with ‘infinite gentleness and kindness’.