Circles of Solitude

I am following Rilke this year. I find his writings to be very nourishing for my soul at this time. I crave his words now, and they seem to always offer some beauty for my soul to rest in for a while.  Yesterday's post I will link here because I think it is a larger issue I have been touching on for some time now.  The idea of solitude and the question as to its role in our lives.          The Solitude We Are

     One of the comments references John O'Donohue who wrote the book  Anam Cara.  This book has long been a sort of Bible for me.  The wisdom found within its pages is so simple in its truth that it cannot be denied.  I can read it a thousand times and still come back to it, open up a page randomly and find some meaning I never saw before.  He talks a lot about solitude.  I bought this book when it first came out in hardcover.  I was living in Ireland at the time, studying abroad and doing a bit of soul searching (I suppose as I always am.)  This book called to me.  The paper book cover is all tattered now after being lent to friends and travelling with me these 14 years.  But the questions and musings of my heart and soul that brought me to the book still remain.  It seems I have been dealing with loneliness and solitude for most of my life.  

   I'd like to think I've learned a little bit, that I've retained some of what I've "learned."  But life is like a spiral.  We always revisit things.   We go in cycles and patterns, and our greatest hope is that the next time a thing comes around again we are a little higher up in the swirl.  Hopefully we've grown and can use that similar experience to gain a deeper insight and further grow.  In this new, yet all-too-familiar stressful situation I find myself in, I feel like I am close to a breakthrough.  I don't know why I feel like this.  There's no indicator, I don't exactly feel hopeful.  Hmm...I think the difference is actually boredom.  

   And I laugh out loud. :) 

      I am tired of this place, I've seen it before, and I'm afraid the past few times has not been any higher on the spiral.  It's terrifying and uncomfortable and all those things, but it's kinda like a reoccurring nightmare.   I've seen it all before, and after enough times you start to remember.  You can see how it's all going to play out and you really don't want it to end the way it always does...

 - and some errant tentacle of my psyche is yawning at the ridiculousness of it all.  

    And that small little difference, that drop of humor that has entered the mind changes the chemistry *just* enough to start the growth of something.  Crystals of hope perhaps?  Or perspective?  Resolve?  I don't know yet.  I just know that something's gotta give this time, 'cuz I'm tired of spinning in circles.