When I was at Walden, I read a quote from Thoreau and thought, “Yes. Exactly. Yes.” So I decided it was my quote for the day, took a picture, and went out to the pond. Here it is:
"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
That paragraph resonates with me. I love to be alone, and go places alone, and I consider the ability to be alone a strength.
But I overcompensate. For example: I picked that as my quotation for the day I visited Walden, but I was visiting with my little sister. I enjoyed the experience more because I had someone to fangirl with. Yet I still picked that (dare I say) self-righteous quote from Thoreau as my quote to think on.
Recently, I’ve realized that I over-glorify solitude. Although always needing someone is a weakness, obsessing over independence can also be done to a fault. One of my mom-friends who I’ve worked for at kamp was one of the first people I heard this from. She told me that I wasn’t good at needing people, and it was something I needed to learn. I’ve also seen this in the point I’m at in college: Freshman year I had no friends, sophomore year I was just excited to have any friends, but junior year, I’ve begun to feel the strains of overcommitting. I am naturally inclined to go wide and shallow—to have many friendships that don’t go deep. I was feeling the exhaustion of too many relationships without depth.
My love of aloneness began when I got to college. I would get in my car and go to dinner or sit at a coffee shop just because I could, just to recharge from being tired of being around people. I realized after a while that this was not something everyone could do—many people needed someone with them all the time. I embraced it as a kind of superpower, reveling in my alone adventures all around the Ham. As I adventured, the city became my own: I found places where my soul could rest.
So when I read that quote from Thoreau—“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time”—I immediately empathized with it, but I also felt a bit of bitterness in it, a bit of a lesson that I still have to learn. I’m not good at going to people when I actually do need them. For the first time in my life, I have someone I’m comfortable going to when I’m struggling. She’s my big in my sorority, and last November I was struggling with something so intensely and actually asked her to get coffee so we could talk about it. I knew that that was what I needed—just to talk about it—so that was what we did.
But I’m still not good at going deep with people I love, I still don’t know what it means to have accountability, I’m still learning what it’s like to have friends pursue me as much as I pursue them. I think, then, that Thoreau’s quote represents an extreme that I don’t need to listen to. It’s easy for me to be alone, but I still need to learn to need people.
To end this blog post in the typical way (or the Darling way, I'm not sure), here’s a thought provoking question (ha):
Which side of the spectrum do you fall on—do you exercise aloneness not enough or too much?
all the love,
charlie
