On Solitude Part 1

Day 50

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' – that wouldn't be enough – but like a dead man”

-Franz Kafka

I am writing this on my last last day alone in Finland. In a few hours I will take a train south, and then fly back home. I have almost entirely been in solitude here, spending my time either pacing in my apartment, or walking by the lake. I have not talked to anyone in person for almost two months, and had no conversations at all except for a few phonecalls from home to make sure I was still alive. I intended something like this when I came to Finland, though I did have some vague visions of meeting new friends or learning a new language – I achieved none of those. This is due to my own inclinations and failings, and to my choices not to talk to anybody. I could have walked around more outside, attended some of the football games I saw, visited the library, or gone to some of the concerts that had posters all around town. I did none of that. Rather, I aimed for something which I knew I could do, and that I would find difficult, and only that one thing. I have found throughout my life that I can either write, or I can talk to people. I am simply not yet very good at switching from a social situation to a private situation, from the mindset of talking and listening to others, and the mindset of listening to myself and writing things down. I find that I have long thoughts, and that times of silence are needed for some of those thoughts to come out. Most of the pieces I have written here were done with very little prior attention to their composition or order. They were, to a one, written down in a single sitting. Often, after I paced around in circles for a hour beforehand, trying to think of how to begin. As I sat down to write, I knew the topic I wanted to write about, but often did not have a clear vision of how to begin, how to end, or what the middle would look like. Any errors in the writing are of course mine, and so also are issues of confusing leaps of logic, distracted monologues, and uncertain conclusions. However, issues of continuity or vagueness are not necessarily mistakes, but are often either a part of what I am thinking and trying to figure out, or a result of the aspectual way of conceiving of what is.

I have generally found that one of the best ways of writing is to just sit down and start. I write like how I speak a lot of the time, with all the added grammatical marks to indicate my pauses for emphasis or breath. This can lead to long run-on sentences, which are certainly not how I was told to write, but are often how I speak. Thus, this work, for all its occasional technicality, is primarily meant to be a vernacular version of my thoughts. It incomplete, for this is the first time that I have sat down for long enough to get more than a page or two of scattered notes written down all at once, but it is a beginning. I hope to formalize it more exactly in the future, though I feel that I have some more studying to do before I am quite up to that.

I graduated college just a few months ago, after quite a few more years than it was originally expected to go. I'm not entirely sure where to go next from here, but one thing which I wished to do before I needed to start on the road to finding a means of living, is to sit down and figure out some of my thoughts. An old professor of mine once told me that if I wished to be taken seriously as a philosopher, that I should first write papers on other persons ideas, and to only write about my own once I was established. I think that was good professional advice, and I might or might not follow it. For now, I'm not aiming at anything in particular, or any substantial consideration of my work, but I felt that I aught to write it down somewhere in the first place.

I have been writing notes for the majority of my life. I still have notes written in school notebooks which I consider philosophical in nature, and I've kept it up. For the most part these are short sentences of ideas, with the occasional paragraph. Several thousand short sentences at this point. I intend to, one day, go through to organize them a little, and perhaps transfer them to electronic format instead of physical notebooks. My thoughts have been formed in all sorts of moments, from solitary ideas before bed, to responses to what I heard in class, onward to particular quotes I thought were interesting, and my personal responses to what I saw around me. I have read a lot of philosophy, but just as many of my quotes are from the pages of manga or fantasy and sci-fy novels. I found that I could see philosophy in all sort of things. There were the philosophies of Wittgenstein, Plato, Leibniz, Descartes, and more which were well-thought out and connected. There were the philosophies of Mencius, Nietzsche, and Emerson, which seemed to not have quite as grand and firm a structure, but seemed to to contain a spark of wisdom for a young kid to live by. There were the philosophies of ordinary, everyday people whom I met, the ones who had made it through tough times, the ones who were patient and understanding, the ones who were angry and confused, who were the people I talked to and the people I observed. There were the philosophies of writers of books, comics, and shows, the ones who had the courage to write down of their own thoughts or ideas about the world, to be wrong , to be confused, to take fire and return it in kind. I found philosophy everywhere.

I do not know if the fact that I saw philosophy everywhere I went is due to the world, or to me – not that, according to what I've written down here, that there is all that much difference. I graduated with a degree in philosophy, I studied philosophy, simply because I never found anything else which I could clearly imagine myself doing for the rest of my life. To me philosophy was everywhere – so I could study philosophy, and do anything. This is of course not much of a plan. In fact, there are noticeably no appreciable goals. The point seems simply to live, ant not necessarily to live to somewhere. To move, but in a blind spiral, not a directed line. I've noticed of course the similarities between my philosophical view of the world and my life – but this is to be expected, because it is my world.

Do you remember ever being unnecessarily contrary when you were younger? Saying no, or holding the opposite view not for any particular reason, and not because you really held the view you espoused or not, but simply because someone was telling you what to do and you didn't want to? Growing up we receive all sort of advice and guidance, all sorts of people tell us what we should do and how we should think. This advice can actually be wise and good, and the ideas espoused could actually be reasonable and well thought out. For all that though, there is sometimes something in us which does not want to bow. Not to man, not to gods, not to fate or reasons or emotion, not to justice or evil or force – not to anything. There is probably a better way to do almost everything that we try to achieve. With good planning and good action, by following good advice, perhaps we can actually learn who we are, what we want, and how to achieve it. I have certainly made my share of very foolish decisions, like most of us. I know that there is a part of me which is a dumb, cowardly, and insensitive brute. I know also that there is a part of me which is a smart, brave, and caring.

We often deal with our own personal issues by shutting them out. We push away and deny what we are in favor of what we want to be, what we think we can be if we try hard enough. What we are supposed to be, told to be, expected to be. Sometimes this works and if you try hard enough you can change who you are, you can evolve. In most of my experience though, the parts of you never really fade away. The old stories, the old ears and hatreds, the old failures and regrets are forgotten, but not forgiven. They still matter, and just as 'I've forgotten most of the books I've read, but nonetheless they have made me', so to has the world in which I was effected me. Denial and forgetfulness only go so far – I would rather know and choose. Not to change who I am, not to go ahead and choose the light over the darkness, but rather to change which form I shall take.

I discovered a long time ago that hate is at its heart, a wish. It is the wish that things were different. If you hate somebody or something for long enough, you grow very tired. To move beyond fear, anger, and hatred - to simply wish there was some power to change things. To leave behind all the things that clouded your judgment and as they gave you energy and drive, also brought you the occasional stumble. The things that were walls, walls that pushed back or walls which in turn held back the floodwaters of life. To hate something deeply enough is simply to be willing to do and sacrifice anything to achieve your wish, the change in the world that you would have. This idea of worthy sacrifice is one that I see come up quite often in stories. I think this is a lie. I think that if there is a hatred, a want, deep enough that you would sacrifice anything to achieve it,that you can also hate that sacrifice. To hate one thing is to have the wish that the thing you hate will cease to be. To hate the world is to have the wish that the world would be different. The world is all that is – the thing you hate and the sacrifice you make. To hate the world is to wish for the entire world itself to be different, to be better. For the world to be a magical place where dreams can become real and the impossible can happen.

In this sense, the world starts and ends with the self. The self in solitude. Your personal views, ideas, life, and history. You are somebody who matters. What you care about is worth caring about, and what you think is worth thinking. The world may shout you down, but if you speak then you, at least, will hear yourself. A part of the world will always hear you when you speak, with words or with actions. We may find that we are unable to shift the rest of the world one iota, but I can at least move myself. And if the world tries to make me move, then I can stand against it. I may be crushed, I may be ignored, I may disappear into the dustbin of history – but what is it to me, if I am dead? I choose to be me because it is the least that I can do, the farthest limit of the world which I can reach and still be me. Let me stand as a pillar to separate the earth and sky, let make something of my life which matters to me.