Solitude and Loneliness
Would I do it again? Choose Peace Corps over the Navy? In a time of crisis, get married as some kind of protection, hope? You bet I would. What I learned in that wilderness time on the Altiplano was the necessity of solitude. Even with the fullness of a day: working with a hundred orphans, hanging out with José and Javier, going home for dinner with my wife, solitude could still call, urging me to go for a walk or a long bike ride. But it has taken me twenty-five years to understand the difference between solitude and loneliness.
     This morning, a gale force wind brought a hard rain, sweeping west to east. As I write, the old forlornness grabs me with the same old tired question: “Where is your life going? You’re spending too much time alone; you’re not being productive!” “ Better check the want ads, get a ‘real job,’ stop writing, quit the part-time maintenance position.”
     Gary and Jim taught me that in being vulnerable, often a horizon opens up or a new threshold appears. For many years I have sat in hospital rooms, attended the dying, dug the cold earth for a burial, brought hot food to worn out bodies. There are many ways to be in the wilderness. I am Gary, I am Jim, I am the one sitting next to me in the clinic, waiting for a “t-cell” count. Fear of being alone, fear not being good enough, fear of an uncertain future can still has sway over me.
     “Maybe I better go for a walk or go for a ride on my bike, ” I say to myself. I see a few seagulls and a solitary pelican gliding sidewise, tacking into the wind. I put down my pen and let the anxiety ooze in and through my body. I stay in my chair. The pelican makes her way up to Gallant’s Channel, turning right to the Newport River and flies on until I can no longer see her. Eventually the fear leaves and I am alone. I pick up my pen and write the next word.