Living, Loving and Aloneness

“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s very difficult to come face to face with our own aloneness. Yet the nature of human existence is that we are, in fact, very much alone. Our experiences, whether physical or emotional, belong solely to us. No one else will ever really know what we experience. Every one of us lives in this situation of radical aloneness. Rilke suggests that what love creates is a shared respect for that aloneness by loving the other’s aloneness, their singularity, a love for what is most uniquely and completely their own.

It can be difficult to find this kind of love, and often difficult to feel it for another. We often value the sense of merging and seek a kind of “filling up” from the people in our lives. We look outside ourselves for a way to manage our anxiety. And in the process, we confuse feeling lonely with being alone.

Getting to know yourself in your singular uniqueness, growing and working to become the person you most want to be is a process worth celebrating. It can make it possible to be alone without being lonely, to feel love without loss of self. And it helps you “stand guard over” and value the solitude of those you love as well.