The flu doesn’t give us much of a choice. Rest is necessary in order to heal.
It’s been two weeks and I wonder why it takes such prolonged aloneness and the feeling of absolute agony to finally feel inspired again. It’s okay to be alone. To be alone is to be… lonely. No. To be alone is to… have no one. No. To be alone…
Alone.
Virginia Woolf said it best:
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of — to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.”
To be alone can feel like the finger of a higher being forcing itself on you to stay put. To not give in to the pressures of productivity. To be. To become so restless you crave connection. To think. To become so indulged in your aloneness you’re unwilling to break free. To feel. To find the space and freeness to create. To express.
At another time Virginia Woolf also had this to say about being alone: “In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.”
If creativity is a way to find connection to the world, to the people around us, to ourselves — if being alone creates a longing to feel a connection, then the act of being alone, the pulling ourselves away from reality and immersing ourselves in the overwhelming condition of feeling an emotion other than what matters to anyone else but ourselves is necessary for the survival of the creative mind. But why is it so difficult to allow ourselves to be alone? Are we afraid? Are we afraid that the act of being alone is threatening our sense of worth? Are we afraid to feel the emotions we’ve worked so hard to push away? Or are we afraid that the act of being alone only validates the loneliness we refuse to acknowledge?
Thirteen days before writing “A Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary:
“These October days are to me a little strained and surrounded with silence, what I mean by this last word I don’t quite know, since I have never stopped ‘seeing’ people… No, it’s not physical silence; it’s some inner loneliness.”
We shouldn’t be afraid that loneliness is a direct result of being physically alone. Like Virginia Woolf, we can be constantly surrounded by people, but there’s a chance that the depth of those interactions isn’t enough to guarantee camaraderie or even enough to write off any possibility of feeling lonely. It’s within those quantified interactions that feelings of loneliness can be exasperated depending on the quality of those relationships. It’s no wonder, then, that Virginia Woolf sought solitude. It’s when she felt most herself. Less lonely. She felt inspired to create when she wasn’t focused on her inability to fit in. When we’re around other people, we instinctively seek the approval of others. Even when we feel unaffected by outside criticisms or opinions, there’s always a small part of us that cares. Because we want to feel connected to others. That’s why we create.
But maybe the problem is that we’ve never really been completely alone. Because even if we’re physically alone, we’re more than likely spending some of that time scrolling through snippets of other people’s lives or watching how other people live through short videos. There’s this constant urge to compare. So are we ever really alone? Or are we all just lonely humans with a desperate need to create?