Intentional solitude

Are you feeling, harassed, spread too thin, spinning in all directions but not really going anywhere? Are you feeling cold, out of touch, lost, confused, as if your life is passing you by? Are you having insomnia, listlessness, and restlessness without knowing why? Are you feeling bone-tired, soul-weary, and thinking “been-there-done-that-so-what-else-is-there-to-look-forward-to”?

If you are feeling even only any one set of these, it may be time for you to “go home.”

It’s a common malady of postmodern life, which has many names yet no particular name at all. Depression, melancholy, sadness, burnout, breakdown—many have tried to name it, and many have tried to cure it with various scientific and not-so-scientific techniques, but it persists, that gnawing that eats at you every moment of every day, and which catches you unawares at the most unexpected of times.

Women may feel it more keenly, but do not talk much about it. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, in her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves (Ballantine: New York, 1995), calls this a result of “natural cycles forced into unnatural rhythms to please others.” She calls for a return to the wild, feminine nature, that instinctive knowing which characterizes a healthy feminine spirit and which permeates a woman’s vitality to the core. She exhorts, “The modern woman is a blur of activity. She is pressured to be all things to all people. The old knowing is long overdue.”

One of the ways the old knowing is rediscovered is what she terms, “intentional solitude,” a conscious and directed effort to “go home” to one’s soul center.

Whenever we experience any one of the set of feelings previously listed, it is actually our soul’s and body’s “natural homing signal” calling us to drop the focus and activities on the mundane, external world and redirect one’s attention to the needs of the inner world. Dr. Estes explains, “The signal goes off as everything begins to be “too”—in either a negative or positive way… Perhaps we have become too intense about something. We can be too worn down by something. We can be overloved, underloved, overworked, underworked… each costs too much. In the face of “too much,” we gradually become dry, our hearts become tired, our energies tend to become spare and a mysterious longing for—we almost never have a name for it other than ‘a something’—rises up in us more and more.”

So instead of treating it as a disease to immediately cure, we are advised to take heed instead and listen to what our bodies and souls cry out for. Forget the over-the-counter quickie prescriptions; forget drink, or friends, or shopping, or partying, or anything else that distracts us from the task of facing ourselves squarely and simply being with our thoughts, feelings and insights.

Going home need not cost much. It simply requires the will and focus to redirect one’s attention and energies from what has previously occupied one’s being in the outer world to the real needs of one’s being in the inner world.

What is homing? Dr. Estes explains it as “a place somewhere in time rather than space, where a woman feels of one piece…. How one spends one’s time in the return home is not important. Whatever revivifies balance is what is essential. That is home.”

Strangely, though, most women seem to feel guilty about their right to take this “space and time out,” as if temporarily pausing from serving and servicing the needs of their children, spouses, lovers, family, work, community, projects, and friends is a mortal sin against everyone, not realizing that they are committing the most grievous sin of all—the sin of totally negating their own authentic needs for rest and renewal, silence and solitude, and simply being by themselves and enjoying their time with themselves, having fun and pleasure without the guilt. The more they negate their needs and subsume these to the “needs” of Others in their world, the more they seek to fulfill their needs through these Others who usually will not or can not be there for them at all times, in all the ways that they need them to be. It’s a vicious cycle of a manipulative kind of loving and serving, helping and servicing others’ needs until one drops almost dead, all the while still hoping that someday somehow they will get their own needs met in mutual exchange too.

Too late, most women find out, that they are their own heroines and saviors. Unless and until they honor themselves first by acknowledging and serving their own authentic needs, they have nothing much of substance and sustainability to give. Intentional solitude gives one this much-needed refreshment and enrichment, so that one may come out of it not only more refreshed and renewed, but with more to give in depth and breadth.

How do we balance the need to go home with our daily lives? Dr. Estes emphasizes the life-and-death significance of it all and how we fail to acknowledge its importance in our lives. “We (should) pre-plan home into our lives. It is always amazing how easily women can ‘take time away’ if there is illness, if a child needs them, if the car breaks down, if they have a toothache. Going home has to be given the same value, even stated in crisis proportions if necessary. For it is unequivocally true, if a woman doesn’t go when it’s her time to go, the hairline crack in her soul/psyche becomes a ravine, and the ravine becomes a roaring abyss.”

So, the next time the homing signals act up—stop, look and listen. Then, go home. When it’s time, it’s time. Go home. *

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Ed’s note- Jean Lee C. Patindol is 35 years old, separated, and happily lives with her three wonderful children aged 10, 5 and 2. Although her training and background is in business and economics, her first and lifelong love and passion is literature and writing. A former editor-in-chief of a campus publication, she teaches at a local university in Bacolod City, Philippines.You may email the author for feedback/suggestions at grace_with_fire@yahoo.com.