Being alone can best test the depth of a person's soul
◈ | Zhou Guoping
1.
Solitude and self
How to judge whether a person has his "self" or not? I can propose a test to see if he can be alone. When you are alone, do you feel bored and unbearable, or do you feel a sense of serenity, fulfillment and satisfaction?
For people with "self", solitude is a beautiful moment and a beautiful experience in life, although it is a little lonely, but there is a fullness in loneliness. Solitude is a necessary space for the soul to grow. When alone, we withdraw from other people and affairs and return to ourselves. At this time, we face ourselves and God alone, and begin to have a dialogue with our own hearts and with the mysterious forces in the universe.
All life of the soul in the strict sense of the word unfolds when it is alone. Talking with others about the past and the present, quoting scriptures, that is small talk and discussion; only when you immerse yourself in the masterpieces of the masters of the past and the present, you will have a real spiritual understanding. Sightseeing with others is just tourism; only when you face the vast mountains and the sea alone, you will really feel the communication with nature.
Therefore, all those who pay attention to the life of the soul will have the same feeling for Rousseau's words: "I never get bored when I am alone, and small talk is something I can't stand in my life." This love of solitude has nothing to do with a person's personality, and a person who loves to be alone may also be a person with a lively personality and likes friends, but no matter how much he is happy to associate with others, solitude is always a necessity in his life. In his view, a life without interaction is of course a flaw, and a life without solitude is simply a disaster.
Of course, man is a social animal, he needs to associate with his kind, needs to love and be loved, otherwise he cannot survive. No one in the world can endure absolute loneliness. But the man who absolutely cannot tolerate loneliness is a man of empty soul.
There are some people in the world who are most afraid of being alone, and letting them stay with themselves for a while is a kind of torture for them. As long as they are idle, they have to find a place to have a pastime, some karaoke ballroom, a video hall, an electronic entertainment hall, or someone to talk to. When they stay at home, they will turn on the TV and watch the shoddy programs endlessly.
Their days are very lively on the surface, but in fact their hearts are extremely empty. Everything they do is to find ways to avoid seeing themselves face to face. I can only have one explanation for this, that is, even they themselves feel their own poverty, and it is not interesting to stay with such a poor self, and even boring pastimes are much more interesting than this. The result of this is that they become poorer and poorer, less and less self-contained, forming a vicious circle.
Solitude is indeed a test, and it can be used to measure the depth of a person's soul, to test how a person really feels about himself, whether he is bored with himself. For everyone, not getting tired of being yourself is a minimum requirement. A person who does not even love himself, I am sure that he will not have much value to others, he cannot have high-quality social interactions. He runs to others, and it is only a disturbance to others, a violation. The quality of all interactions depends on the quality of the communicators themselves.
Only between two people whose souls are full and rich can there be truly moving love and friendship. I can guarantee that there will not be a single example in history or in real life that would refute my assertion and prove that a shallow person could have had such a wonderful experience.
2.
The space of the mind
I read a passage by Tagore that had a similar meaning, but he expressed it better. I summarize and paraphrase his words as follows—
Unoccupied space and unoccupied time have the highest value. A rich man's wealth is not manifested in his warehouse full of goods and a profitable business, but in his ability to buy a large space to decorate the courtyard and garden, and to leave himself a lot of time for leisure. In the same way, having an open space in the mind is the most important thing, so that there will be freedom of thought.
Tagore goes on to give an example of the mental space of the poor and miserable who are completely occupied by the worries of everyday life and the pain of the body, so that there can be no freedom of thought. I would like to add that there is another type of example in addition to this, which is the busy person. Where the space of the mind is occupied, it is often out of persecution. If the poor and miserable are persecuted by poverty and suffering, the busy are persecuted by fame and responsibility.
Fame and fortune is also a kind of poverty, and the pain of wanting to fill is also characterized by lack, and the competition in Vanity Fair is also full of survival struggle anxiety. As for responsibility, there are three situations, one is out of the need of the heart, the other is another matter, the second is borne for fame and fortune, which can be boiled down to fame and fortune, and the third is neither inner consciousness nor greed for fame and fortune, which is completely imposed by the position or objective situation, which is almost the same as suffering. So, a busy person is likely to be a poor and miserable person at heart.
Here I would also like to talk about the kind of busyness that comes from inner responsibility, because I often think that my busyness belongs to this kind of busyness. If a person really likes a cause, and his body and mind are completely occupied by this cause, can it be said that he has no free space for the mind? It depends first and foremost on whether he really feels the joy of creation in this kind of business. Writing, for example, is certainly a hard labor, but it must be accompanied by the joy of creation, and if not, there is reason to wonder whether it has degenerated into a coercive affair, or even a utilitarian labor. When one takes writing as a profession, such transformations can easily occur.
The free space of the mind is a realm of pleasure that includes the joy of creation, the joy of reading, the joy of appreciating nature and art, the joy of emotional experience, the leisure of doing nothing and the joy of reverie, and so on. All these pleasures are not isolated, but symbiotic and interconnected. Therefore, if a person is always just immersed in writing, no longer has the time and mind to enjoy other pleasures, the happiness he creates and the freedom of the heart are also questionable. This reflection of mine is a warning to myself and a reminder to all those who are willing to do so.
What I want to say is that no matter how much you love your career, and no matter what your career is, you have to reserve an open spiritual space for yourself, an inner calmness and leisureliness. Only in this spiritual space can you taste your cause as the fruit of your life. Without this space, you will always be busy, your mind will always be filled with various businesses related to your career, then no matter what external success you have achieved in your career, you have only lost your life without tasting its fruits.
3.
Abundance of quiet
I find that the world is getting noisier and quieter. I like to have quiet days.
Of course, silence is not static, not closed, like stagnant water in a well. There was an era when the vast world was just an unverifiable legend for us, and each of us was locked in a small corner, like a screw being screwed in an immutable position. At that time, I had just left school and was assigned to a remote mountainous area, where life was calm and monotonous. The days seemed to have stopped, not like a river, but more like a well.
Later, the times suddenly changed, and people's lives were like thawed rivers, crisscrossing the land under the sun. I was also like a river with too much energy backlogged, and the tide of life rose and fell in my riverbed, turning my adult years into a turbulent rapid.
And now, I'm calm again. However, this is the calm after the ups and downs. After many collisions and twists and turns, the river of my life seems to have finally come to an open valley, which has converged into a vast lake. I used to wander the shores of the foothills of the Alps, watching the reflections of snow-capped mountains, white clouds and forests stretch out in the midst of the blue mystery. I know that the water in the lake is still flowing, and it is the depth of the lake that makes the lake as silent as a mirror.
My days were really quiet. Every day, I read and write at home, and the various lively circles and gatherings outside have nothing to do with me. My wife and daughter and I taste ordinary human affection, and the various places and things outside for fun have nothing to do with me. I am very satisfied with this way of life, because my state of mind is also quiet.
Perhaps, everyone needs some kind of hilarity at some point in their lives. At that time, the full life force needs to rush outward, to find a river channel for itself, to determine a flow direction. However, one cannot stay at this stage forever. Tolstoy said of himself: "As I grew older, my life became more and more spiritual. "One might interpret this as a sign of aging, but I know very well that even in old age Tolstoy was more alive than all his peers, even many young people. Only a strong life can gradually develop in the direction of spirituality.
Now I think the best state of life is rich quietness. Quiet, because you get rid of the temptation of fame and profit from the outside world. Richness is due to possessing the treasures of the inner spiritual world. Tagore once said: "The movement of the outer world is endless, proving that there is no goal in it that we can achieve, and that the goal can only be elsewhere, that is, in the inner world of the spirit." There, what we desire most deeply is peace above achievement. There we meet our God. He went on to explain, "God is the eternal resting love of the soul." By love he speaks, it should be broad, referring to the achievement of creation, the richness of the spirit, the great love, and all this transcends the struggles of the world and is in eternal peace. This realm is the ultimate in rich quietness.
I don't completely reject hilarity, which can also have content. But bustle is always a characteristic of external activities, and if any external activity does not have a spiritual pursuit as its driving force and a spiritual value as its goal, then no matter how vigorous and loud on the surface, it must be poor and empty in essence. I doubt all the causes that are too noisy and all the feelings that are too ostentatious, and they always remind me of Shakespeare's mockery of life: "Full of voices and fanaticism, there is nothing in it." ”
4.
Friend
One weekend morning, I suddenly thought of this topic. It's the weekend again, who's going to call me? I've noticed that the usual phone calls are always busy, but on weekends there are fewer calls. Usually, most of the phone calls are editors, reporters, etc., for the sake of drafts or interviews, it is a business affair, and most of the people who call on the weekend are friends, who want to chat or get together, which is a personal relationship. So, are I getting fewer and fewer friends?
Friend is really a very general word. The friends that ordinary people say mostly refer to acquaintances who are familiar to a certain extent, and when they encounter things that need help, they can ask for each other. Regarding such friends, the former sages often gave harsh comments.
Krylov said: "When you have difficulties, bring in your friends and you will get all kinds of good advice." But as soon as you mention actual assistance, your best friend pretends to be deaf and dumb. Mark Twain said: "Sacred friendship is so sweet, loyal, solid and long-lasting that it can accompany a person throughout his life, if not ask for money." Aristotle said more simply: "Ah, my friend, there is no friend in the world." ”
I don't want to think that people's hearts are so bad, and in fact they are not so bad. I believe that as long as my request is within the reach of the other party, most of my acquaintances will certainly help as appropriate. It's just that I am a person who is more knowledgeable, and I am absolutely reluctant to ask for someone unless I have to, and there are very few cases of real last resort. For the sake of quietness, I also don't like to spend my energy on the socializing of etiquette. Therefore, my interactions with ordinary people often have difficulty in achieving the required level of familiarity, and I am not enough to be called friends in this sense.
Contrary to friendship in general, others set the standards of friendship extremely high, as Montaigne describes, it must be that the hearts of two people are completely integrated, seamlessly integrated, as if two bodies share a soul, so that each other is unique to each other, and the friendship between them is not allowed to be shared by a third party. According to Montaigne himself, his friendship with LaBoesi was like that.
I do not doubt that there is such a singable friendship between heaven and earth, but, like love, which can be sung and wept, first, it depends on rare opportunities, and secondly, it mostly occurs in youth. Montaigne and LaBoesi met in their youth, and only five years later, the latter died. In general, this kind of romantic friendship often has the idealistic color of young people and is difficult to last for life.
Of course, it is not impossible, that is, Lu Xun's so-called "life is enough to know oneself" realm. However, in my opinion, since loyal love can only be obtained by chance, the difficulty of finding loyal friendship is not a great regret. In short, at least for now I don't have this unique close friend. Now it's time to talk about my understanding of friends.
The friend in my mind is neither an acquaintance of general acquaintances nor a lover of the heart, but the degree should be somewhere in between. There are a number of people in this world who think of each other when they don't meet, who can feel a tacit understanding when they meet, and have a good time together, and they are my friends.
Sometimes, such friends will snowball together to form a so-called circle. Circles are easy to give people the illusion that everyone in the circle is a friend. I also had a circle of people who seemed to have a high style, and at that time I was quite intoxicated by the high-end conversations, and thought that such a day would last forever. Unexpectedly, due to the changes in my life, this circle no longer existed for me.
Boswell's Johnson said:
As a person ages, if he does not make new friends, he will quickly find that he is left alone. One should constantly mend one's friendship.
I had read this very disapprovingly before, and now I realized the bitterness of it. However, making friends is expensive in nature, and there is no need to deliberately pursue. On the lonely weekend, I gratefully remembered a few old and new friends who still thought of each other, so I calmly enjoyed my loneliness.