This experience explains what Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he said, “Love . . . consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other”· and what Anne Morrow Lindbergh had in mind when she wrote, “I feel we are all islands in a common sea.” It made me see that the togetherness of friends and lovers can become moments in which we can enter into a common solitude which is not restricted by time and place. How often don’t we dream about being together with friends without realizing that our dreams are searching for much more than any factual reunion will ever be able to realize? But slowly we can become aware of the possibility of making our human encounters into moments by which our solitude grows and expands itself to embrace more and more people into the community of our life. It indeed is possible for all those with whom we stayed for a long time or for only a moment to become members of that community since, by their encounter in love, all the ground between them and us has indeed become holy ground, and those who leave can stay in the hospitable solitude of our heart. Friendship is one of the most precious gifts of life, but physical proximity can be the way as well as in the way of its full realization.
A few times in my life I had the seemingly strange sensation that I felt closer to my friends in their absence than in their presence. When they were gone, I had a strong desire to meet them again but I could not avoid a certain emotion of disappointment when the meeting was realized. Our physical presence to each other prevented us from a full encounter. As if we sensed that we were more for each other than we could express. As if our individual concrete characters started functioning as a wall behind which we kept our deepest personal selves hidden. The distance created by a temporary absence helped me to see beyond their characters and revealed to me their greatness and beauty as persons which formed the basis of our love.
Kahlil Gibran wrote:
When you part from your friend, you grieve not: For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
Living together with friends is an exceptional joy, but our lives will be sad if that becomes the aim of our strivings. Having a harmonious team working in unity of heart and mind is a gift from heaven, but if our own sense of worth depends on that situation we are sad people. Letters of friends are good to receive, but we should be able to live happily without them. Visits are gifts to be valued, but without them we should not fall into the temptation of a brooding mood. Phone calls, “just to say hello,” can fill us with gratitude, but when we expect them as a necessary way to sedate our fear of being left alone, we are becoming the easy victims of our self-complaints. We are always in search of a community that can offer us a sense of belonging, but it is important to realize that being together in one place, one house, one city or one country is only secondary to the fulfillment of our legitimate desire.
Friendship and community are, first of all, inner qualities allowing human togetherness to be the playful expression of a much larger reality. They can never be claimed, planned or organized, but in our innermost self the place can be formed where they can be received as gifts.
This inner sense of friendship and community sets us free to live a “worldly” life even in the seclusion of a room, since no one should be excluded from our solitude. But it also allows us to travel light vast distances because for those who share their solitude without fear, all the ground between people has become holy ground.
So our loneliness can grow into solitude. There are days, weeks and maybe months and years during which we are so overwhelmed by our sense of loneliness that we can hardly believe that the solitude of heart is within our horizon. But when we have once sensed what this solitude can mean, we will never stop searching for it. Once we have tasted this solitude a new life becomes possible, in which we can become detached from false ties and attached to God and each other in a surprisingly new way.
~Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: the Three Movements of the Spiritual Life
