Solitude and Creativity

One could say that we are congenitally predisposed to suffer, even though it is probably wrong to impute to nature this discouraging condition that contradicts the instinct for self-preservation. More likely it is millenia of culture that have contaminated the will to live. Whatever the reason, it is a fact that human suffering is pervasive, sometimes imperceptible but at other times so brutally in evidence as to override all else.

Let it be clear that I am no friend of pain, but wherever we look it is there. To echo Kierkegaard:

I am not the man who thinks that we ought never to suffer; I despise this paltry wisdom, and if I have a choice I prefer to bear pain to the bitter end. Suffering is beautiful, and there is vigor in tears; but one should not suffer like a man without hope[4].

Human suffering has not only its shocking aspects, but also those of a more discrete nature that nevertheless carry significant weight. Loneliness, for example. We know well enough what it is, but only when we experience it personally does it touch us deeply. Isolation, like other emotional experiences, reaches a threshold beyond which words lose their meaning. We cannot communicate our most intimate experiences to others. And this is not due to the physical absence of people around us, but rather, paradoxically, to their presence. It makes itself felt the moment we are in contact with others, when we believe we ought to feel their nearness and support, but don't.

Thus we conclude that our loneliness is not due to a difficulty in having relationships but is rather a question of inner suffering that can be neither cured nor alleviated by external presences. We become tragically aware of solitude as a basic human condition[5].

One reason for that sense of alienation goes back to our most formative moments when essential needs like mirroring and tenderness were not met. When such deep desires are not gratified, one is obliged to create within oneself the response that others were not able to give. It is this surrogate fulfillment in the world of the imagination that makes us aware for the first time of our innerness. In other words, on both the ontogenetic and phylogenetic levels, frustration motivates creative fantasy and with it the awareness of one's inner dimension. To acquire this knowledge means in a certain sense to become capable of understanding one's personal truth. This is always mute. When it is expressed, it is communicated in silence. If one really has to speak, what results is a translation of silence.

The contact with solitude allows us to avoid indoctrination; in fact, to create a complete Weltanschauung in this situation would mean deriving one's knowledge of reality exclusively from within. That is why, for example, it is so difficult for some children to start school. That which is proffered now clashes with something more vital and individual.

But at this point we make another tragic discovery: we learn that the world outside does not belong to us. In life's difficult moments we are always alone, because the other has no power to help us, however much he or she may want to. In such a predicament not even an invitation to conquer the outside world proves of interest. Sometimes the commitment to acquiring material wealth can be a defense against the deep fear of remaining alone. When we give up such external defenses, we enter a realm where we can no longer participate on the collective level because of our irreprehensible individualism.

A person who lives consciously and intensely is considered dangerous by the collective because this is the very level on which truths are gathered.

In solitude—understood not as detachment from others but as a feeling of being alone among our fellows—we represent a truth that can unmask and denounce the falsity that circulates in the external world. The great figures in history, those who changed our vision of the world, drew their truths from the wells of their solitude.

One must not, of course, fool oneself into thinking there is no price to be paid for this. On the contrary, the price is very high: the suffering one feels when one tries to communicate and becomes aware of the distance between oneself and others. This totally personal experience cannot be translated into words, but it is as binding on us as an intimate secret. Many existential tragedies are due to this kind of life, one that offers us the opportunity of making our own the most intimate and profound aspects of things, but deprives us of human warmth and relationships. Every time we mingle in the community, in social situations, the flimsiness of conventional relationships is brought home to us.

A conventional relationship is not a substitute for, but the exact opposite of, an authentic one. The words it uses are virtually empty and have no expressive power. Such relationships are common in everyone's life, and so we live an almost uninterrupted sequence of exchanges that could be called insignificant if it were not for our few desperate attempts to save at least the semblance of a real bond. Even when the chance for an authentic relationship presents itself, we are so out of the habit and unprepared for it that the fear of being inadequate pushes us into adopting false behavior.