Stillness / Solitude

Once again, just the other evening, I was mesmerized by the PBS documentary "Alone in the Wilderness," chronicling the life of Richard Proenneke in a remote area of Alaska. I was just channel surfing along - fully intending on going up to bed to further wrestle with a Bentham treatise on Utilitarianism - until I stumbled across "Alone," a program I've seen from beginning to end at least 4 times at this point. Why this video memoir never fails to hypnotize me is somewhat of a mystery to me. If you have yet to experience this story - you can read the background on Richard Proenneke and "Alone in the Wilderness" here.

Perhaps it isn't such a mystery, the attraction to this show - I continuously look for moments of stillness and solitude. It's little wonder that Thoreau, Jack London and Merton are on my short list of favored authors! And that religious monasticism exhibits a curious gravity for me - lets just say that the entire contemplative approach to life is enormously appealing to me.

To be honest, though, my life is anything but conducive to contemplation or stillness, and it is certainly not congenial to solitude! If you are married and have children, own a home and are involved in the community in any manner, then you know of what I speak! I can be prone, in my weaker moments, to a frustration with the seemingly frantic pace and noise of life. In those moments I do experience a thirst for a quieter journey.

Frustration, though, is antithetical to stillness - frustration practically screams "TAKE ACTION" to change some irritating aspect of my life that I cannot reconcile myself with. Interestingly - none of those "actions" of my past resulted in any degree of spiritual stillness.

I suppose I've come to realize a few things about myself and about life. The first realization, and easily the most important, is that regardless of the sound and fury around me I do have a conscious choice to seek an inner stillness. The corollary is that stillness does not require solitude. The second insight, as an extension of the first, is that I am personally responsible for seeking that inner stillness - there is no one to blame for my choice not to do so in the moment.

I don't know if anyone else ever experiences this - but this is the example I have in mind when I think of the insane pressure of just ordinary daily living:

I'm in the truck with my wife and our two 8-year olds - we decide to hit the drive-thru at some fast food outlet (I know, horrible food, etc - we don't do it often!). Anyway - with cars in line in front and behind us - I ask "what does everyone want?" knowing full-well that I cannot remember all of that when it comes time to give the order over the intercom. When we do get to the order intercom - I have three voices all talking at once as to what they want - I'm trying to relay it to the clerk, and listen that he/she got the order right - with the voices in the truck still giving me their orders - and I'm trying to read the menu board to see if they even have such a thing as what they are asking me to order...with the cars behind me waiting on us to finish ordering. At the end of this process - I don't order anything for me because I don't have the energy left to figure out what I want to eat!!!

I know - you might accurately comment - "Dude, get a grip." Believe me, I can multi-task with the best of them - but that unique intersection of cars and kids and board menus and verbal lists and "what was that last order, Sir?" responses just demonstrates that at my core I'm built to seek stillness - and act as needed - rather than the "shoot first, ask questions later" approach!

So - physical solitude for me, by pure grace, is not likely - I have a family and a life in community for which I am genuinely grateful. Stillness, on the other hand, is completely accessible to me at any moment I choose to pursue it - an inner stillness, unrelated to the activity occuring around me.

Clearly, this is the attraction to those stories that represent solitude, silence, stillness. Not to mention the physical connection to the wilderness - the simplicity of life reduced to actions of survival - to food, clothing and shelter. From these self-reliant survival actions arise the fundamental meanings we attach to life - and the foundation upon which we construct the upper floors of complexity of modern living.

I'll continue to drink in "Alone in the Wilderness" each time I'm fortunate enough to catch it being aired - knowing that the physical solitude represented in the story is mine for the taking from the perspective of an inner stillness.