Spend Time in Solitude

We hide from ourselves by being with others. Spend time alone in areas of low population density, where you can feel the stillness. Go out into the desert or up into the mountains or to the ocean where there aren’t too many people. It is always easier to capture eternity in the falling snow or along the coast where the waves crash and in solitary and lonely places. It is the quiet places where it is easiest to feel eternity. Stay a day or two and meditate and take walks in areas that feel good to you. Find out who you are again. Remember.

You don’t need to be recluse and avoid people, but you have to set aside a lot of time for stillness. That is the only place there is real fulfillment. You need to slow it down. If you thrive on the city energy it is necessary to leave the city frequently and to walk in parks, to get away from people. You are more sensitive than you realize. Get in touch with nature. Find a spot that makes you happy.

To be alone is not to be alone. It is only possible to truly feel immortality when we are by ourselves.

Men frequently say to me, “I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.” I am tempted to reply to such,—This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.