Listening to what lives beneath the words
I ask the great spiritual guide and poet Mark Nepo about how silence and stillness clears the waters of our soul and explore why the prospect of being less lonely fills me with a surprising regret.
Where does loneliness live in my body?
Tucked into my belly button so when I bend over I gasp. Iron screws in my shoulders that make a shrug an inevitable torture. It doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. A heart that closes with hurt, hope barred entry. Nestled in the soft animal skin of my stomach. The silence inside me and out there, a silence that becomes a scream if I’m not careful. In the long upwards stretch of my arms to the sky, a quiet beseeching for answers. In tears that come when I dance alone in my living room. I want. I want. I want. Lonely. Alone. Which am I? It’s not the same, a matter of degree. Give me your hand and I’ll give you mine. The gap is not that great. We can cross.
I wrote the passage above as a free-writing exercise in
where our teacher asked us to enter into a piece of writing with questions as our fuel. In doing so, she told us, “We’re engaging negative capability, our willingness to befriend uncertainty and dwell in the unknown. We’re entering open mode, where all new things arise. We’re allowing ourselves to use writing as a process of discovery, not recitation.”And writing, in this Year of Discovery, is allowing me to uncover the layers of how I think about and experience the many differing shades of aloneness, loneliness, and solitude.
Now that I am three weeks away from moving to Barcelona, where my life will become full of people I love and new people to meet and new friends to make, my loneliness—my companion of these past three years—will almost certainly recede. That fills me with a strange and surprising regret. I am writing my way through these complex feelings. (I think many of us can relate to these mixed feelings about isolation and solitude vs social re-entry as the global COVID pandemic receded. Many introverts found solace and comfort and extroverts found hidden inner resources).
The nature of loneliness and solitude was on my mind when I had the great good fortune (thanks to the generosity of my friend Louisa Wah from
who gifted me the sessions) to ask a question directly of poet Mark Nepo, during his three-session webinar, The Fire of Aliveness: Coming Back into the World.The webinar centers on the challenges we face in returning to life after hardship and solitude: “Every life on Earth has had to cross the threshold from solitude back into relationship, each of us with an awakened heart and opened mind. Yet how do we open after being closed? How to reconnect after being isolated? How do we renew our lifelong journey of inhabiting our soul? How do we know what to pick up and what to put down?” These questions could not be more pertinent to my life at this juncture.
Living in 3D readers will recognize Mark Nepo as the most cherished of all the spiritual guides I’ve come to appreciate in the past few years. Mark’s The Book of Awakening, offering a short inspirational essay for each day of the year, is a non-negotiable daily practice for me since late 2022. It is the book we traveled with when my daughter Marielle and I walked the Camino last September. Now she, too, has The Book of Awakening as her daily practice. For three years my day has begun with Mark’s wisdom echoing in my ears and in my heart. So you can imagine my racing pulse and excitement as I raised my virtual hand to ask him a question in the Q&A segment.
When I came on camera, and felt his warmth and kindness radiate even across a screen, I first told him how much his work meant to me, how it had lifted my spirits and held me steady during my divorce, my caregiving for my mother and through the grief after her death. He thanked me. And then I asked him:
“How do you view the power of silence along with stillness for connecting with the fire of aliveness? Living alone I find I am always filling the air around me with music, with podcasts, with other voices. I have found silent meditation challenging for that reason. I wondered if you could give some advice on accessing silence along with stillness?”
His answer was so wise and generous that I share it here, for all of you:
“Silence is actually never silent. It’s a language under words, under music, under noise. Keats famously wrote the line, ‘Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter.’ And so I think that our relationship, our staying in conversation with all of life, the surface and the depth, the noise and the silence, helps us stay in the fire of aliveness.
“It is not by accident that every song ever written comes out of silence and returns to silence. Nor the fact that one of the most humbling, and I think noble things, about being a poet is that the only things worth writing about are unsayable. It is through these attempts that we try to speak what can’t be said and more importantly, to listen to what lives below words, for how it touches us, for how it shapes us.
“Before I was introduced to meditation years ago, friends who were profound meditators, when they learned of my writing practice, said, ‘You’re actually meditating when you write.’ And I guess just intuitively, instead of dropping all thoughts, this is where writing has become listening and taking notes, more than saying anything. The first level of expression is to free us of trouble, to free us of circumstance and then the next level of expression is to let the waters still. And then the next level of expression is to let what is other than us touch us. And then the next level is, how do we relate? All of that is to be in conversation with life.”
When Mark finished sharing this, I was speechless, filled with so much gratitude for being heard, seen, understood and encouraged. This in particular struck me like the perfect chord on a guitar or the perfect turn-of-phrase in a page of prose:
You’re actually meditating when you write.
I loved how he reminded me that “every song ever written comes out of silence and returns to silence.” I do not need to banish noise and other voices to access the still waters of what he described in “The Fire of Aliveness” as the one unchanging reality, the fundamental bottom of life. I only need to listen deeply enough to hear what lives beneath it—what lives beneath the words.
To help us understand this, he offered the metaphor of a lake:
“The surface of life is always changing and the underlying deeper reality is always more constant. A way to enter this is with the image of a lake. The wind might still itself occasionally, not very often, and the lake will be completely flat and go clear. But most of the time there’s a breeze. Or if it’s a stronger storm, it’ll be choppy. But only when that lake is still can you see through to the bottom.
“This is the ongoing metaphor for this unchanging reality, that the fundamental bottom of life is always there. But in our surface days through circumstance, trouble, and what seems like chance, through all the things we experience, the choices we make, the surface keeps changing. But even when we can’t see the bottom, it hasn’t gone anywhere.”
I find this reassuring. As I wrote about last week in choosing “Discovery” as my word for this year, my intention is: 2025 will be my year of discovery while holding center. Holding center means never abandoning myself for the sake of something outside myself: whether that’s a person, an experience, a commitment, or some other externality. Holding center is being a fierce protector of my overall mental, emotional and physical well-being.
And that includes finding that balance between the social life I desire in Barcelona and the solitude that fills me up and is essential to my writing. Will I have lonely moments in my new chapter in this new country, despite having my older daughter living nearby? No doubt.
These past two-and-a-half years of living on my own or in the often sad and painfully lonely circumstance of caring for my mother with dementia in my home have taught me a great deal, including that I don’t need to be afraid of loneliness.
I have the inner resources to soothe myself, to come back to center. After a lifetime of being highly social and in a codependent relationship with my ex-husband (and other people in my life), of never living alone until age 62, I now cherish my time alone. The passage with which I began this essay captured the very real pain that I have experienced in my lonelier moments. But it is not the defining portrait of what this period has meant in my life. Solitude has given more than it has taken. It has allowed me to “see to the bottom of the lake.”
I wrestled with this same question around solitude last year, in this essay: “Are we lonely, alone or graced by solitude?”
I wrote the following, which remains true today:
“There have been times I have been lonely, which is another creature altogether. It sits beside me restlessly; it is not quiet and gentle like solitude…Yet in the hours I spent in the pre-dawn darkness, journaling about what I was thinking and feeling, I was drawing back the curtains, peeking into parts of myself that would not have been visible without this quiet, solitary self-inquiry. There were things I did not want to see, things which challenged my cherished view of myself. Still, I looked. I became braver than I thought possible.”
As I wrote recently to my friend, the gifted writer
of , “ Mostly, though, I have loved my solitude. I learned to be my own best company, living alone for the first time in my life. And now, with my move to Barcelona, it is time to widen the aperture, to keep good company with others as well as with myself. I feel safe enough now to do that: to return to the good company of others without losing myself.”On April 9 last year, six days before my mother died,
invited us to ask our inner voice of love what it would have us know about being alone and aloneness. Without knowing the grief that would have me by its throat in less than a week I was giving myself the courage I needed to always return to center, to my own true solitary self, to find the answers I seek. Here is the letter I wrote:Dear Love,
What would you have me know about being alone?
My morning dove (who is often these days a mourning dove), I am so very glad you have at last come to me with this question.
The answer is so utterly simple, my sweet seeker. Just invoke my name. Go ahead, say it. I love you. I love you. That's it. Say it over and over and over again until you believe it.
You have never been and never will be alone. Your clever, overthinking little mind likes to overtake your heart, sending you spiraling into thoughts where you lose sight of me. But I am here, ladybug. Open your hands, your eyes, and your heart and look.
That September day you walked away from the marriage and the life you had known for over 30 years, to move into the first home of your own. Remember how exhilarated you felt? Remember that sense of peace that surprised you? That was me beginning to get a little more air time. You felt my presence and you reveled in your solitude.
On the days when it scared you, when you wondered, "Am I lonely or simply alone? Will I always live alone now? Can I be okay with that?," that searching led you back to me. You walked, you meditated, you journaled. You discovered what fine company you were for yourself.
You realized that all those women who had told you that you are never more lonely than in an unhappy marriage were right. You are braver and stronger than you know. This solitude has been a gift and a blessing as you heal, as you wait tenderly for the next unfolding of your life. And when you feel that cry inside you, "Oh! I am so alone!" remember this: I am here. I am holding you. You are safe and so loved. Not just by me but by so many others in your life. These connections form the threads of your life but it is you and me, babe, that keep the tapestry from unraveling. As you walk into yet another beautiful day, feel it all.”
Love, Love
And now, dear beloved friends, here is a song that always soothes me in my solitude from Swedish musician Benjamin Gustafsson:
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN. LET’S CHAT! Below in the comments, please share:
How do you feel about solitude, aloneness and loneliness?
Have you had challenges befriending aloneness?
What have you found to be the gifts of solitude?
How have you reconnected after a period of isolation?
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I'm shedding quiet tears of joy and my soul has been deeply touched by this extraordinarily beautiful essay. Amy, thank you for sharing the gift of yourself. I'm witnessing the widening of the river of experience and of life, as Mark Nepo writes in his entry in The Book of Awakening today. Your insights, self compassion and craft have reached new levels of depth that, when shared, deeply nourish the soul of your readers. I'm so happy and grateful to be sailing alongside you in a kayak on the river of our life journey. 💕🪷🫶
Your exploration of solitude and loneliness resonated deeply. It's a reminder that even amidst a bustling social life, carving out moments of solitude is crucial. It's in those quiet spaces that we truly connect with ourselves, hear our inner voice, and recharge. As you beautifully put it, solitude has given you more than it has taken. I find that to be true in my own life as well – it's often when I'm alone that I have my most profound insights and creative breakthroughs.