“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own,” Ralph Waldo Emerson — a man of profound insight into the human condition — wrote in his meditation on the value of solitude.
“The ultimate test for the ability to control the quality of experience is what a person does in solitude, with no external demands to give structure to attention,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote a century later in his reflection on how being alone amplifies our creativity.
Indeed, sometimes the most tender and sweet, the most encouraging and innocent society that lets us be ourselves can be found far away from other people. In nature, for example. “There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still,” Henry David Thoreau wrote while spending his time in a voluntary two-year exile in the woods.
Rereading all these revelations reminded me of Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935–January 17, 2019) and her poem in praise of solitude, “I Have Decided,” included in the collection “A Thousand Mornings.” Read here by the poet herself. Enjoy!
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I HAVE DECIDED
by Mary OliverI have decided to find myself a home
in the mountains, somewhere high up
where one learns to live peacefully in
the cold and the silence. It’s said that
in such a place certain revelations may
be discovered. That what the spirit
reaches for may be eventually felt, if not
exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m
not talking about a vacation.Of course at the same time I mean to
stay exactly where I am.Are you following me?
Complement this poem from “A Thousand Mornings” with Robert Louis Stevenson on the joy of solitary walks.
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