Loneliness

“Lately I’ve been feeling that maybe loneliness is a human sensation

given to us to drive us into relationship,

even as hunger drives us to food and tiredness drives us to sleep.

In that sense, it’s a beautiful gift,

for without loneliness to make us hurt,

some of us would wall ourselves in

and wither in our separateness.

As I’m driver into relationship

By my loneliness,

Life opens up to me again.

This is creative loneliness!

<W.E.HULME, Creative Loneliness. Why Go it Alone? (1979) >

loneliness

< ARISTOTLE, Nicomachean Ethics (4th c.B.C.) >

Loneliness

1. “ No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.” [ARISTOTLE, Nichomachean Ethics (4th c B.C.)]



2. “Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solitude for things. One’s relation to them the daily seeing, or touching, begins to become love” [ELISABETH BOWEN, The Death of the Hearth.” (1936)]



3. “Who knows what true loneliness is- not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.” [ JOSEPH CONRAD , Under Western Eyes ” (1911)]