Loneliness and Aloneness

Last week I had my first book reading and signing. It was at Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side in Manhatten. Standing beside a table of well-placed books, before the rows of chairs starting to fill up, I couldn't help but think of all those hours spent in privacy; in offices with the door locked and phone turned off; in the back of libraries, hunched over my keyboard between shadows of shelves; in hotel rooms, my back to the beckoning bed, typing until the sounds of my fingers start to echo, crash, laugh and taunt; on the couch after the family's all gone to sleep, computer on my lap, solitary in my cube of eerie blue light, suturing words and sentences together with the urgency of a surgeon stranded on an island trying to prevent her own body from bleeding out; in bed staring toward where the ceiling must be constructing scenes that morph into dreams...

It's really something to think of all those hours spent in aloneness. Aloneness which isn't quite lonely, but filled with spirits, both friendly and demonic. And magic portals through which to travel, bodiless, into other spaces and times, where your raw soul can slip into imaginary garments of flesh and get lost in the verisimilitude of a complete but imaginary world...

And then to stand there and to realize all at once that that very world, born of aloneness can be shared and spoken of. That others can immerse in it, and share their impressions and opinions. That others can now dance the dance you've practiced by yourself for all these years, and you can watch them, and even though you know it so well, it now looks totally new and different. It is a bewilderment.

There is so much fear of loneliness that I think we convince ourselves that aloneness is something to be avoided. But the first time I requested office space from a friend for a week, and found myself with my laptop in a windowless basement with cinderblock walls I was so happy I nearly wept for joy. There is a kind of aloneness which is precious, when your mind is saturated and you need the quiet to think however you please, wildly or methodically, and you can encounter the truths about yourself, with you as your own judge. Aloneness can be about regrouping, rejuvinating. I suppose the aloneness which is most regenerating is that which you choose. If you choose to take off, and you are in control, you can emerge renewed.

But often we find ourselves alone and it is not of our choosing, and then it is loneliness. Then it is frightening. I think, however, that the pen is a great tool in those cases to change loneliness to aloneness. Many religions teach that we were created out of a void. How can we charge a void so that it is abuzz with thought and energy, and generates life?

The beautiful and brief introduction to the book The Empty Chair: Timeless Wisdom from a Hasidic Master Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, begins as follows:

Is the chair you're sitting on empty?
"Ridiculous! How can it be?"
You're right, it can't be...because you're sitting on it.
But it is possible for a person sitting on that chair to feel empty.
Then, the chair is empty, even when occupied!
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov was about to teach when he suddenly grabbed hold of the chair he was sitting on and said: "When one sits on the chair, one is a mensch!"
Webster's defines mensch is a person of integrity and honor. For those who know Yiddish it implies more; those familiar with Rebbe Nachman's teachings know it implies even more than that.
In the modern idiom, a mensch is a whole human being. It is someone who has integrated the diverse elements of his or her being, both physical and spiritual; someone who has overcome the inner emptiness we sometimes feel. When such a person sits on a chair, the chair is full. One sits on it, and one is a mensch.
 
I love this teaching. If you wonder whether or not you are whole, whether or not you are a mensch, whether you have wholeness in spirit or body or emotion, Nachman is saying just sit in a chair. The very fact that you fill it up is your answer! The Hebrew word for "wholeness" is shalom. Do you have shalom? If you can sit in a chair, than you do! Simple!
Nachman's philosophy is actually a little more complicated than that. The empty chair represents the "alienated self." Rebbe Nachman was born in 1772 and his lifetime spanned the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the American War of Independence, and the French Revolution. Beethoven and Mozart were composing during the Rebbe's day. There was a great conquering of external frontiers, but Rebbe Nachman felt that there was an unprecedented inner void. He said, "I'll tell you a secret. Great atheism is coming into the world."

And alienation from God, according to Rebbe Nachman, leads to alienation from self, to a sort of black-hole feeling, or more simply, emptiness. When we think about times when we have felt empty, we can often trace the feeling. At first we ask "Where was God?" and that alienation from God leads us to wonder, "Why them and not me? Who am I? Aren't I nothing, too?" and that is emptiness. The chair I am sitting in might as well be holding no one at all. Here today, gone tomorrow, nothing. But, the chair squeaks. The headrest is imprinted. I am in it, so I have to be whole.