For a long time I was afraid of solitude. It seemed to me that it came as a punishment: when you were not chosen, not invited, forgotten. I filled my evenings with people, phone calls, other people's noise, anything not to be left alone with myself.
Then came a winter when there was no one around. And for the first time I heard what my own life sounded like.
Two different solitudes
I understood that there are two solitudes, and we call them by one word. The first is when you do not exist for others. The second is when you finally exist for yourself.
The first hurts. From it you really do want to run. But the second is a space. In it you can think without hurrying, make mistakes without witnesses, reread one page three times because no one is waiting for you to finish.
In that silence I began to hear what I actually wanted. It turned out that much of what I had considered my own was simply an echo of other people's voices.
The freedom no one talks about
We talk a great deal about freedom as the right to go anywhere. But there is another freedom: the right to stay where you are and prove nothing.
Solitude is not the absence of people. It is the presence of yourself.
Now I am not afraid of empty evenings. I do not seek them out, but I do not run from them either. When they come, I make tea, open the window and listen.
The most surprising thing is that after such evenings I love people more. Probably because I come to them not out of emptiness, but out of fullness. I do not need them to save me. I am simply glad that they exist.
