The PATH: Solitude, Love, and Joy
sent by J.W. Bertolotti | February 14, 2022
Welcome to The PATH — A weekly reflection with three timeless insights for daily life.
1. Solitude
According to the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, learning to be alone is a path to peace and a deeper connection in the world. Merton wrote, “The person who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much they surround themselves with people.” But the person who learns, in solitude and recollection, will find peace in their loneliness.
Although silence and contemplation can open us up to anguish and doubt, my conversation with Dr. Beverly Lanzetta, author of A New Silence, uncovered the practical benefits of learning to be alone.
Lanzetta explained,
Rather than a detriment, it can be healthy to be alone. In solitude, we can find our heart of hearts, the inextinguishable flame that burns brightly within.
As the theologian and writer Henri Nouwen put it, “Solitude is vastly different from a ‘time-out’ from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows.”
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2. Love
Similar to wisdom, there are many interpretations of the meaning of love. What does love mean to you? Do we need to love ourselves to be able to love others?
In the classic The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis wrote:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one… Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
In my interview with Sebene Selassie (author of You Belong), she explained,
Every chapter of the book could have been titled Love Yourself — with all the pages filled with one sentence, repeated over and over: “Love yourself. Love yourself. Love yourself.”
Our sense of freedom and joy depends on self-love, explains Selassie. We don’t need to be someone or something else when we genuinely love ourselves. By doing so, our sense of separation softens, the need to dominate dissolves.
To quote Thomas Merton, “Love is the practice of our lives. Love is our true destiny; we do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone.”
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3. Joy
“Do not rejoice in empty things,” stressed Seneca in a letter titled Real Joy is a Serious Matter. What are these empty things? According to Seneca, we must find prosperity in that which no one else can control. By doing so, we learn how to experience joy.
Seneca wrote,
There is only one course of action that can make you happy. I beg you, dearest Lucilius, to do it: cast aside those things that glitter on the outside, those things that are promised you by another or from another, and trample them underfoot. Look to your real good, and rejoice in what is yours. What is it that is yours? Yourself; the best part of you.
The notion that true joy is always available exists across traditions. Although true joy is available and simpler to achieve than we realize — it does not make it easy. “As long as you live, keep learning how to live,” advised Seneca.
To experience true joy, we must turn to what is truly good, sure of satisfaction. Seneca explained true joy comes from a good conscience, honorable counsels, from right action, and from despising the things of fortune.
By adopting a calm and steady mode of life that walks a single path — we begin to discover true joy.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful. If so, please consider sharing it with others.
Each week, we send a short reflection with three insights to help you live your highest good. If you are not a subscriber to The PATH you can sign up here to receive it right to your inbox.
Image credit: Love and Peace by David Burliuk (1914)
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