By: Barnali Bose, Editor-ICN
KOLKATA: Somebody has said, “ I never found a companion as companionable as Solitude. I need to be face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company.”
Truly, sometimes in order to understand the world,we need to be away from it.
A man who loves freedom, loves solitude for it is only when he is alone that he is truly free, free to think for himself, free from having to wear a mask and free to live as he wishes to.
It is in solitude that scientists are able to plunge into the ‘why’s and how’s’ of things in the universe.
Man is quintessentially a loner,isn’t he? He arrives in this world alone and departs unaccompanied. In course of life, he meets people from different walks of life.
However very few are meant to stay with him till the end. One must remember that every little encounter that takes place is for a reason.
William Wordsworth hears a solitary highland lass humming a tune, the strain of which lingers with him till much later.
Yet on another of his solitary sojourns, he is mesmerised by the sight of the daffodils swinging in the breeze joyfully.
Much later the scene flashes in his ‘mind’s eye’ and the great poet calls it “ the bliss of Solitude.”
Beautiful verses that the poet wove would perhaps not have been possible had he not drifted away from the crowd. Thus solitude has also given birth to great literature.
I would like to narrate an anecdote from the life of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The poetess was on the way to attend the Governor’s inaugural ball in Madison.
Sitting across the aisle, she spotted a woman in black weeping inconsolably. Having failed to pacify her,she reached the venue of the celebration,deep in thought.
As her eyes caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she thought “ Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone.”These were to become the introductory lines of her poem ‘Solitude‘.
As Albert Einstein said, “ I live in that solitude which is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity.”
It is in solitude that one can look back at the chapters of one’s life, dwell upon what was and what could have been.
Confrontation with his inner self enables man to learn to forgive himself and others for the lapses in life.
It also enables him to make notable contributions to Mankind through his observations, perceptions, analysis and inferences.
