Being Black XI: Loneliness, Solitude and Love
‘Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.’
Mother Teresa
I am single.
I was only told I was loved once by my father that I can remember. The story was that when I was around 14, I had been out with some mates to a local Ice-Skating rink. We’d had a good evening and were walking back to the Underground station when from a local pub, two men ran out and chased us down the road. One slashed a friend running in front of me with a Stanley knife, and another slashed a friend running behind me. We managed though to get away, and when the police were called, they raided the pub and found the two men who were guilty, because I was the main witness. When the court case came round it was my father who had to take a day off work and take me to the Court. I was in the dock for maybe an hour and told all that I knew. The two perpetrators went to prison for several months, both of them.
When we got home that evening, my father called me into the kitchen. It was then he told me how proud he was of what I had done that day in court, and, and I will admit there was a tear in his eye, then he hugged me. This was maybe the only time he every pulled me to one side and did that, hence why I always remember it.
It was also one of those experiences which reminded me of just how lonely I always was living in that house with him.
When we talk about life and aging, often what we do is see these experiences through a very white, Eurocentric, heteronormative lens. What we struggle to do though is to recognise that as we get older, as persons of colour age, that there are increasing numbers of them who live out their lives alone. Another problem here is that when we explore loneliness we also for a number of religious and colonised reasons struggle to notice the prevalence of suicide in our community because of not just loneliness but also isolation (Troya et al., 2022).
For those of us who have struggled with loneliness, there are two ways to survive such an experience. One is more grandiose where we turn loneliness into something positive which says ‘hey I don’t give a fuck. I can go back to doing what the hell I like3 when I like and should someone join me, then fine, but if they don’t then I really don’t care at all.’ That feeling whilst fine for a while, denies the reality. Or if I change my terminology slightly, in its grandiosity it rises away from the embodied feeling of loneliness, which is that it is painful. It is a deep wound, a sore one, and one which has left many a person debilitated and broken, and maybe even suffering from mental health distress.
The other is more depressive. And that comes with the being situated in the loneliness. This can be where addictive behaviours emerge, ways of coping with the deep inner distress of being alone. If I use my own self as an example, when I was lonely as a teenager, my way of coping with this would be to eat a whole Sainsburys steak and kidney pie, with a large side of mashed potatoes. The combination worked for me as that overladen plate of food helped to send me to sleep later on so I could forget the fact that I was alone, that I was lonely.
Loneliness or the drive to escape loneliness, when we see this in relationship to love then we realise there is a problem. This thing, this loneliness is what drives away love, what drives away connection, acceptance, and care from others. It is the wounded inner child who has been scapegoated and left in the wilderness to fend for itself. That wound then being transferred onto every situation, every friend and relationship. The over-trying, the being compliant, the false smile which says please accept me. The resultant reaction being one of rejection, abandonment, by those caught in the projective identification of our disgust laden neediness. Or conversely, it is exploited by the narcissist who will suck such loneliness dry. Beyond all of these, and many other ways of being, there can reside a jagged scar of loneliness which can feel quite debilitating to move on from.
‘Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone, and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.’
Paul Tillich
As I intimated, being consciously, or unconsciously, owned by our loneliness leaves us open to being exploited by the systems which rotate around us. Meaning, that in order to survive said experiences we either adapt ourself to avoid the deep inner wellspring of pain which may reside within us, or we wallow in its depths, unable to work out what we should do, where we should go, who we should be with.
A counterpoint to loneliness is solitude. One of my all-time favourite books about psychology, from Anthony Storr, reminded me on my journey through my training of the importance of solitude as a concept. The fact that so many of the stories in this tome spoke so eloquently about the wisdom hidden within solitude, the creativity, the spirituality even that comes up when we are able to be not only alone, but to be with the often deeply painful experiences of being alone (Storr, 1988).
I say that last line as moving from loneliness to solitude is a massive step. It is deep shadow work, and at times for some of us it can be excruciating. It involves the taking back of a lot of power to define and be defined by. It is also though the engagement with the immense pain of otherness, the aspect of being an outsider which comes with being lonely and alone. The taking back of control, of power, of self-definition also comes with this period when we move from loneliness to solitude, as we are less and less defined by the needs, wants and expectations of others, and we start to express ourselves in ways which are more authentic if less constrained by social constructions. In this period we start to listen to the inner knowledge which tells us who we are, what we need, and the direction we need to head in next.
Solitude though, when we engage with it more fully, then we are also engaging with an inner space, a potentially very creative space within us. I myself as an adult walk in solitude, not always because I am lonely, but because something within wants me to see something, do something, be something, or say something. This is why I travel so much. This is why I have lived abroad, I have sat on beaches on several continents, I have ridden buses and trains across South America and Africa, and why I have written five books. This is how I have done everything from sitting in a cab with the wisest of men in Penang having a talk about life, to walking out of a favella because I got lost in Belo Horizonte guided by someone kindly and generous. My life is not one where I have done normal things, because I have had to engage with my solitude, so I encourage anyone reading this to do the same.
‘Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.’
Paulo Coelho
When we walk in solitude we walk differently. We feel different. And people see us differently. There is an inner wisdom and knowing which radiates something different to those around us. That movement from loneliness to solitude brings therefore a different relationship with love. Love is less that thing which we need to win out of someone from some kind of unconscious competition in order to avoid this most painful of feelings. Love is something which we encounter on each and every adventure we create or go on, and which radiates out from us, hence why people are drawn to us.
When we walk in solitude, when we engage with the creativity of our inner being, then love comes to us as well. Like the artists who choose to sing through the pain of their experience (Ella, Prince, et al) we are drawn to them because through their solitude and their engagement with the creative they are expressing something of the nature of living which we can all connect with, and as black peoples we do this as well as anyone else.
There is one issue though. That solitude can make us appear as if we are too self-sufficient, and also that what they see of us doesn’t fit into their model of how we are supposed to be, hence they have no reference point for us. This is fine to a point, but never forget that love, and relationships are important also, and a good person, the right person, will recognise that our need for relationship and connection is just as important as our need for solitude and space to be creative. They wont feel threatened by this, because most probably they have done enough work on their own link with solitude that they can hold space for ours.
I am single (reads differently now don’t it)?
‘Solitude is not the absence of love, but its compliment.’
Paulo Coehlo
References
Storr, A. (1988). Solitude. Flamingo.
Troya, M. I., Spittal, M. J., Pendrous, R., Crowley, G., Gorton, H. C., Russell, K., Byrne, S., Musgrove, R., Hannah-Swain, S., Kapur, N., & Knipe, D. (2022). Suicide rates amongst individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds: A systematic review and meta-analysis. EClinicalMedicine, 47, 101399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101399