Category: Solitude
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The Beauty of the Solitary Life
Thomas Merton, The Journals, vol. 6, 24 June 1966, p. 344: "The beauty of the solitary life . . . is that you can throw away all the masks and forget them until you return among people." For, as one of my aphorisms has it, "The step into the social is by dissimulation." Before I…
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True Community
A true community is made of and by individuals, and individuals are made by solitude. True community is as much a task as self-individuation.
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The Worst Thing about Poverty
Substack latest. A quotation from Theodor Haecker with a bit of commentary.
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Jack Kerouac on Robert Lax
During his years of unsuccess, when he was actually at his purest and best, an "unpublished freak," as he describes himself in a late summer 1954 letter to Robert Giroux, living for his art alone, Kerouac contemplated entering a monastery: "I've become extremely religious and may go to a monastery before even before you do."…
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Being With
It is sometimes good to be with others, but never if it demands loss of self.
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The Old Soul
The old soul sees, while his body is yet young, that this world has nothing to offer us that is finally satisfactory.
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The Introvert Advantage
Social distancing? I've been doing it all my life. O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo! Happy solitude, the sole beatitude. How sweet it is, and made sweeter still by a little socializing. Full lockdown? I could easily take it, and put it to good use. It provides an excellent excuse to avoid meaningless holiday socializing with…
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The Art of Life: Among ‘Regular Guys’
Among regular guys it is best to play the regular guy — as tiring and boring as that can be. Need relief? Strictly limit your time among regular guys. But mix with them a little lest you be hated for being 'aloof,' or 'unfriendly.' As long as one is in the world, one must be…
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A Part-Time Monk’s Solution to Suggestibility
We are too open to social suggestions. We uncritically imbibe dubious and outright wrong views and attitudes and valuations and habits of speech from our environment. They don't appear wrong because they are in step with what most believe and say. 'Normal' beliefs and patterns of speech become normative for people. This is the way…
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Solitude
The measure of spiritual depth is the ability, not merely to tolerate, but to enjoy and profit from solitude.
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Sweet Solitude
Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence is an introvert too, not that I am surprised: Our time has come – introverts, that is. We who are happiest with our thoughts, who shun the mob, for whom “social” is code for “tedious,” who never exchange high-fives or fist bumps, who remain in our rooms with Pascalian contentedness,…
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Moods
There is an analog of contagion in the spread of attitude. Moods are socially transmissible. Which do you carry? Which do you avoid? Voluntary social self-quarantine is something to consider. Thus spoke the introvert.
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Socializing and Idle Talk
Some good comes from socializing if only as a concession to our ineluctable social nature. Only a beast or a god could live without it. But even I do too much of it. In society one is apt to talk too much about too little. Review the previous day's unnecessary conversations. On balance, did they…
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Some 19th Century Rules for Social Intercourse
The wise man abstains from an excess of socializing as from an excess of whisky; but just as a little whisky at the right time and in the right place is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, so too is a bit of socializing. But he who quits his solitude to sally forth among…
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The Worst Thing About Poverty
Theodor Haecker, Journal in the Night (Pantheon, 1950, tr. Dru), p. 38, written in 1940: 155. The worst of poverty — today at any rate — the most galling and the most difficult thing to bear, is that it makes it almost impossible to be alone. Neither at work, nor at rest, neither abroad nor at home, neither…