Solitude

The characteristics of the solitary bird are fivefold: First, it flies towards the highest point Second, it does not tolerate companions Third, it aims its beak to the sky Fourth, it has no definite colour Fifth, it sings most sweetly.

SOLITUDE
Close your eyes and feel your presence, enjoy your own company. Search for solitude. This is the way a leader builds his integrity and acquires power. We all have tasted immortality. It was during our physical gestation, when for nine months (but in fact for an endless time) we were aquatic, dreaming beings, floating in the amniotic liquid. And while for zoological beings this is the only gestation, necessary and sufficient ‘to come to this world’, for human beings this physical gestation is followed by an age of development, a sort of long psychological gestation, which continues until the age of 18-20. Therefore the news I am giving to the youngest of you is that you were not born around 1990, but as complete beings, you are having your birth right now, in 2010.

And just now, like Narcissus, you are looking at yourself in the mirror of the world and no parent or teacher, no school or university, has prepared you to recognize your image in what you are touching and seeing around you. Up to now you have been in the shell, family has protected you. Now you are starting to bare your own reflection in the world, and the image in front of you is not always pleasant. You start to experience the first disappointments, the first misfortunes, some accidents, sentimental delusions, apparent problems… And not having recognised them as the reflection of your being, you have already gotten used to complain, to blame and accuse others, to hide, to lie, to feel sorry for yourselves. These are the clear signs that you are becoming part of the dark sea of adulthood. Adult does not have a very nice etymon. It comes from adulteration. We could say that an adult is an adulterated being, a child who has stopped dreaming. You are going to be hypnotised by a description, a tale of the external world, like 99.9% of grown-up people. You spend most of your time out of yourself, with others; and if occasionally you are alone, you are waiting for something to happen, a phone ringing, a person or event that can bring you life from the outside. Longing all the time for the company of others is like depending on a lung-machine for breathing. Following others, living in their shadow, imitating others and whatever is cool, trendy, makes your life banal. Be ahead of fashion! Put it behind you. Be yourself… The others will be imitating you.  To achieve this state of freedom, of independent thinking, you have to know yourself, you have to find out who you really are. It is necessary to reduce the hours that are spent in ordinary activities, working out of home, absorbed, immerged in the external world, and stay some time in solitude, alone with yourself. Spend more time being in your own company, free from any kind of conditioning. Do it intentionally if you wish to achieve a life rich in all senses.

For most people, and especially young people, to spend time alone is unbearable. They search for others to fill their solitude, they stuff their lives with engagements and events; their agendas are crammed with meetings and appointments. In the effort to escape from themselves, and the unbearable burden of a forced loneliness, they look for the crowd, they gather in its temples: cinemas, theatres, stadiums, they huddle in a group with others and they are at ease wherever they can feel the reassuring presence of the crowd. Multiplicities of events and commitments, external circumstances, an unceasing flow of facts, of insignificant experiences, the constant presence of the others in our lives, are all indicators of the incapability of living in solitude. People do not like to spend time in their own company and when, obliged by circumstances, they happen to be alone; they turn on the TV, make a phone call, listen to music or look for the company of a book. What I have learned from the Dreamer, and which I have narrated in The School for Gods, the incapacity of being alone, the compulsive need for others, are symptoms of a self-destructive inclination, although unconscious. People, especially youth, cannot bear solitude because they do not love themselves. The inability to love themselves leads to a kind of self-sabotage that may come about in various guise, through harmful attitudes and habits, like smoking, assumption of drugs, abuse of alcohol, but also provoking apparently involuntary, unpredictable accidents… like the many casualties for road accidents that happen after leaving a party or a disco. Solitude is fortitude. Solitude has to be felt as a friend. We need to learn how to feel good on our own, loving ourselves. The more we live in solitude the more occurrences disappear and number of people we meet shortens to make space for more intense encounters and more real events. There is an internal time and an external time. Schools and universities should transfer to their students the intelligence that one must balance them, which we must dedicate to ourselves at least as much time as we dedicate to others and the external world.  If not, we will be left without the oil in the lamp, with our being deprived of the ‘precious essence’. When you are alone, you must learn how to live beautiful moments in a conscious, intentional, creative solitude if you do not want to live bad moments in a forced loneliness. Anytime you can, take the opportunity to transform loneliness into precious time to enter into yourself, to practice the most fruitful of all activities: observing, studying, knowing yourself. You should realize, and then explain to your children, that staying by yourself means to build yourself, to strengthen yourself.  It is necessary to learn how to transform loneliness into creative solitude. Creative solitude means to have self-control; it means to master your emotions, to possess your inner world.  Not comprehending this, people search for fulfillment and happiness in the outside world, they try to find certainty in the eyes of others. But the world, the outside reality is only a mirror. Things happen only because you are. There is nothing out there. Nothing at all. Also the people that you meet and believe they are real, are nothing but your reflections. In reality, you only meet yourself. There is no greater adventure, no work more useful than that of encountering others and recognising them as projections of our thinking, our states of mind and our values. One day you will realize that you are the Dreamer and not the dreamed, the Creator and not the creation, that everything is at your service. Then you will no longer be dependent. Close your eyes and feel your presence, enjoy your own company. Search for solitude. This is the way a leader builds his integrity and acquires power: being with himself. He knows that power cannot come from the world, cannot be given to him by others. Only a few ‘greats’ of history have arrived at feeling inside themselves this sense of vastness, knowing that they could not depend on others, that they could not ask anything of anyone.

A leader is alone.
He builds himself from the inside, in solitude. Alone with himself, in stillness and silence, he can catch a fragment of eternity to enlarge his thinking, to invite large, courageous ideas and solutions beyond imagination. There he finds the strength to take decisions that always go against existing ‘status quo’, common opinion and the convictions of others. His certainty comes from his integrity, the belief that everything depends on him and that he can only rely on himself. Solitude versus others, individual versus mass is a great subject that needs to be brought further and deeper. Others are you. You in time. Whoever you meet measures the distance that you have inside. The others are you distant from you. When they have too much significance in your life, this is a worrying sign that soon or later you can be trapped. But this will be matter for my next article and I look forward to discussing it with you.