Thoreau: quiet desperation
  What is Thoreau talking about?

One way of thinking about what Thoreau is getting at is to think about the difference between “having” and “being.” Many Americans are led to believe the secret of happiness is to be found in what we have. Thoreau suggests this is a deception. We are made happy by what we become. The desire for money, power, reputation, fancy houses or cars (or carriages), expensive clothes keep people miserable.

He is also aware that many people are tormented by fears and anxieties. As an antidote to this, he suggests appreciation. We can’t experience fear and appreciation at the same time. When we stop to appreciate the beauty of nature, our fears recede.

Most people . . . go to work, get their paycheck, balance their checkbooks, and that’s it. On top of that, they wonder why they have money problems. Then, they think that more money will solve the problem. Few realize that it’s their lack of financial education that is the problem.” “The pattern of get up, go to work, pay bills, get up, go to work, pay bills… Their lives are then run forever by two emotions, fear and greed. Offer them more money, and they continue the cycle by also increasing their spending. This is what I call the Rat Race.”

Fear has them in this trap of working, earning money, working, earning money, hoping the fear will go away. But every day they get up, and that old fear wakes up with them. For millions of people, that old fear keeps them awake all night, causing a night of turmoil and worry. So they get up and go to work, hoping that a paycheck will kill that fear gnawing at their soul. Money is running their lives, and they refuse to tell the truth about that. Money is in control of their emotions and hence their souls.”

It is perfectly normal to desire something better, prettier, more fun or exciting. So people also work for money because of desire. They desire money for the joy they think it can buy. But the joy that money brings is often short lived, and they soon need more money for more joy, more pleasure, more comfort, more security. So they keep working, thinking money will soothe their souls that is troubled by fear and desire. But money cannot do that.” In fact, the reason many rich people are rich is not because of desire but because of fear. They actually think that money can eliminate that fear of not having money, of being poor, so they amass tons of it only to find out the fear gets worse. They now fear losing it. I have friends who keep working even though they have plenty. I know people who have millions who are more afraid now than when they were poor. They’re terrified of losing all their money. The fears that drove them to get rich got worse. That weak and needy part of their soul is actually screaming louder. They don’t want to lose the big houses, the cars, the high life that money has bought them. They worry about what their friends would say if they lost all their money. Many are emotionally desperate and neurotic, although they look rich and have more money.”

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids about Money

ACCEPTING LONELINESS

If we can recognize and accept the real loneliness of the human condition—that, ultimately, we are each alone—we can then begin to free ourselves from the fear of loneliness that chews away at our human potential. “Each of us travels alone. No one else can always keep us safe."(2) If we can accept the pain of being human, of being self-aware, then perhaps we, like Jacob, might claim a blessing from our struggle. We will not then squander precious human resources trying to evade and escape the loneliness which has in it the seed of new life. In the pain of all human experience there is the call to conversion. The grandest schemes for avoidance and escape will not make us unalone, but they will distract us from our grandest human task: cooperation with the ongoing process of conversion.

In accepting loneliness as a part of the human condition and abandoning the frenetic search for someone or something to make us unalone, we can then be open to the message within our existential pain. Patient and prayerful waiting and listening are necessary, also courage and honesty with ourselves. But it is the only way to freedom from domination by fear. The alternative is to choose to remain unaware of what life asks of us (and irresponsible), but then we shall remain unfree and our life determined by our anxiety. “There is no solution to loneliness but to accept it, face it, live with it, and let it be. All it requires is the right to emerge in genuine form."(3) “The cure for loneliness lies in facing it and understanding it."(4) This acceptance and understanding is necessary if we are to live creative lives, if we are to be free and open to the opportunities for further growth and development. Before we can take this step toward understanding, we have to let go the fallacious idea that pain has nothing to teach us, that life should be always comfortable and pleasurable. If we are serious about our human task, we become aware of the invitation in the pain that enters our life, an invitation that invites us to be more than we are. “Where there is no pain there is no growth."(5) The pain of loneliness is such an invitation and opportunity.

Some of the greatest literature, art, and music that the world has known has been conceived in moments of profound loneliness, loneliness that has been accepted and allowed to speak. Such creation cannot happen through denial. And such creation is usually a lonely and solitary experience. It is like birthing—we have to go with the labor pains; no one else can do it for us. The creation that might result from our bearing the tension of our pain may bring delight to many, but the process of bringing it forth is a lonely one. Out of loneliness grows the contented aloneness that opens up to us our own creative depths. It is not in driven busyness that we find that “more” that we long for. It is in the recollection of aloneness that we discover deep within ourselves that which supports us when we have nothing or no one to take away our loneliness. It is here that we come in touch with the life that connects us with ourselves, with others, and with God.

The fear of loneliness can keep us from coming in touch with the life beyond loneliness, the life of aloneness and solitude. It is indeed easy to be seduced by the temper of our time, which is to stay constantly busy and on the move. By staying busy, by taking on more and more jobs, we can avoid the confrontation of loneliness; we look to our jobs and roles to tell us who we are and to provide us with self-validation. But the affirmation and approval of the world cannot provide us with self-validation. This comes from beyond ourselves, and yet it is located in our own depths. Our true identity is known only by the One who created us. Self-validation can come only from getting in touch with that truth which we are.

Part of our fear of loneliness is our fear of losing our self, or our sense of who we are, if we are cut off from those things which provide us with a sense of identity. This fear of loss of self is related to our fear of death, which is in truth a fear of life (see Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death). This fear has an insidious way of leaving its mark on all that we do or think. Because there is the fear of losing our sense of self if we suspend our activity, we shun the aloneness and non-activity of solitude. This only serves to strengthen our belief that we already know who we are. By our own definition we limit that self whose milieu is more one of infinitude. But this self known by the Father can be discovered only by first confronting the fears and insecurities which allow us to be less than we are. It is in solitude that we begin to see more clearly that image of ourselves that is fashioned more according to the demands of our ego; it is in solitude that we begin to glimpse a new image with possibilities beyond anything we have known. This journey from the old to the new carries us through a desert place. But this desert is the anteroom to joy. In this lonely place we are confronted by our own darkness, but we also meet there the One who knows our true name. Our triumph over loneliness will not come by refusing to be alone, avoiding solitude. “Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude."(6) And those who can bear solitude will discover joy. Solitude is the handmaid of the interior life. Without quiet and aloneness, it is not possible to develop an interior life. And without an interior life, and an awareness of Something beyond self which calls us into being, there is nothing to speak to us but our own emptiness and loneliness.

DISCOVERING SELF THROUGH LONELINESS

It is not surprising that we have a fear of loneliness; the self that most of us are with when we are alone is indeed not very good company—a self impoverished and without holy joy. The great void that confronts us when we are cut off from those things which help to shore up a flagging sense of self speaks to us of missing parts of our self, areas which we have not yet discovered and appropriated. Our loneliness speaks to us of unlived life, potential within us that we are not living out. The responsibility to become more fully the person our loneliness invites us to be is a sacred one. The pain in our loneliness is transformed when we become aware that we are invited to be partners with God in the completion of our own creation. God asks our cooperation in our own completion, and our “attentiveness to the shape of this inbuilt task"(7) is nothing short of prayer. We have no task more sacred than to consent to wait in the void of our loneliness until grace breaks through (as Simone Weil suggests). Only then can our “inbuilt task” begin to unfold. Only by accepting the loneliness of the moment as sacrament and gift can we know God’s will, which is the peace, the joy, and the love that we long for. Essential to this creative moment is our being able to see our self as the gift of God to us. Only then can we begin to relate to our self.

Kierkegaard speaks of relating to one’s own self by willing to be oneself. This is a heroic task. Can we have the courage and willingness to become who we are meant to become without a—sense of gratitude which recognizes self as gift? William M. Thompson sees our development as spiritual beings as being directly related to our capacity for gratitude.(8) But perhaps before we can recognize and accept self as gift, and say yes to the personal task of becoming, we must be able to recognize and accept the gift and opportunity in our loneliness—and even in our despair. Our willingness to cooperate in God’s work of creation that we are depends much upon our consciousness of gift. In accepting self as gift (as well as the longings of the human condition) and accepting the task of becoming that self that beckons to us beyond the loneliness, we come into relation to others, to our self, and “to the Power which constituted it."(9)

The courage to be oneself emerges from accepting one’s fear of nonbeing. By our acceptance of the fear of nonbeing, which confronts us in our fear of loneliness, we are able to overcome our fear of becoming who we are. Implicit in the acceptance of our fear of nonbeing is our acceptance of our inability to be that person without help. Lacking the confidence to become who we are, we place our confidence in the One who calls us forth. The fear of nonbeing in our loneliness anxiety is overshadowed by the love that calls us into being, through the loneliness, to the self who dwells in God. This self can have the courage to be only when it experiences itself as known and loved by the One who both calls it and empowers it to be.

As co-creators and as carriers of a divine spark, we have a responsibility to join in the work of divinization of the world. The work begins with us. We “must build—starting with the most natural territory of our own self—a work, an opus, into which something enters from all the elements of the earth.“‘(10)Even as we build our own souls we are collaborating in the building of the earth, the completion of ourselves and the world. All that is a part of our life enters into this “work”—throughout our lives we are and have been in the process of making our souls and building the world. This work can begin in earnest with our conscious response to the personal task of transformation. Our loneliness and longing remind us that we are not yet all that we are meant to be.

Seen from this perspective, it would seem that loneliness is indeed a gift; it proffers us the opportunity to recognize our own incompleteness and the invitation to accept our part in this work of creation. Ernest Becker speaks of loneliness as an “evolutionary achievement.” In “The Spectrum of Loneliness,” he observes that loneliness is distinctive in evolution; human loneliness is unique because “it develops out of a non-physical, non-instinctive sphere."(11) Existence poses for each individual a question that must be answered. And we cannot find the answer within ourselves wholly. “One cannot explain or justify one’s own existence."(12) That answer can come only from “some kind of ‘beyond.’”

Becker goes on to discuss the varieties of loneliness, including the “loneliness of individuation.” He asks: “What kind of social forms can we begin to imagine, in which the loneliness of individuation could be considered a desirable developmental goal in one’s personal life—in place of the frantic driveness of cultural and national achievement . . .?"(13

http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/843621kelsey.html