“There is no place closer than the air alone,” the youth May Sarton (May 3, 1912–July 16, 1995) wrote in his remarkable ode to solitude – the solitude he came to know, during the course of his long and luxurious life, as a breeding ground for creativity.
Living alone can be deeply rewarding and deeply challenging. It's not for everyone. It is not for those who like its offer of freedom and concentration, but who avoid its dangerous visits of loneliness and isolation. It is not for those who find the peace shattering. It is not for those who are hungry for other knowledge to confirm their knowledge and redeem their truth. It's only perfect.
In his old age, living alone on the coast of Maine and enjoying a renaissance of creative energy after a long depression, Sarton returns to the story of what solitude is and what it is not in the pages of his endlessly rewarding journal. House by the Sea (public library).
Looking back on his life, he writes:
Loneliness, like long love, deepens with time.
But what solitude brings to a person is shaped by what he brings when he is alone. One day in August, life brings Sarton immediately to consider the art of solitude and the conditions necessary to make solitude not resignation but rapture:
Yesterday I received a letter from a young woman who lives alone, who is a film producer of some fame. He wants to make a film about people living alone, he will come next week to talk about his plans. I get that you have doubts about the life of being alone. I told him that I felt it was not for young people (he is only thirty-three). I didn't start living alone until I was forty-five, and I had “lived” with the idea of passionate friendships and love affairs very richly for twenty-five years. I had a lot of life to think about and digest, and, above all, I was a person at that time I also know what I want from my life. The people we love are built into us. Every day I suddenly realize something someone taught me a long time ago – or just yesterday – with a certain conviction and self-awareness that came from a confrontation with someone I loved enough to try to put together, no matter how painful that effort.
Train Buddhist scholar and teacher Stephen Batchelor on the art of solitude, Emerson on what it really means to be alone, and a modern field guide on how to be alone, then revisit Sarton on gardening and creativity, how to cultivate your talent, how to live freely in a harsh world, and his wonderful poem, solitude and love about relationship.
