Thoughts about Self Born By Solitude

I am alone right now. Not really alone. In fact, there are about three-hundred people right around me. But I don’t know any of them at all. We’re all going to the same place, Frankfurt, Germany. But most of us are in our very own travel-zone. I am not sure, if I like this solitude. It’s not that I feel any inclination whatsoever to begin a conversation with my neighbors on the plane. No, what I am feeling is a sense of godforsaken loneliness that comes from being so very far away from my children, from my family. When I asked them this morning, if—given a choice—they would have come with me to Germany, to their great-grandmother’s funeral, they said “yes.” They would have. Even though, I asked, you also seemed slightly annoyed last year when the three of us traveled to your great-grandfather’s funeral? Yes, they would have come. That made me incredibly sad. Partially it is because I think it only makes sense for them, after having experienced their great-grandmother for so many years, so many times, that they would also be there to walk along side her coffin to her grave-side, to bid her farewell, one last time. But my sadness is also more about me. My inclination is to have them around, if they so choose. I would not force them to be with me, if they had other plans. Or if they just don’t want to. What is emerging for me from this is that their presence in my life feels like a tremendous energetic center. I love having them around, I love doing things with them, I love doing things for them, I love talking with them, hearing them, watching them. I love marveling at them. All of this feeds me, gives me purpose. I love it. As neat as this is, as much mileage as I am getting out of being a father, I know that it meets with a a certain kind of emptiness on the inside. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I am living vicariously, through my children. But I know, and have often said so explicitly, that I have put my Self (sic.) on hold in order to be a father. Being alone, on this flight to Germany, forces me, at least for a little while, to see what’s there on my very own inside. I am not exactly scared of what I might find but I am recognizing that fatherhood has, to some extent, made me creatively and spiritually indifferent. I am saying this without judgment, because I recognize that my way of being a father has made this choice fairly inevitable. But I also am beginning to see that, for my sake and for the sake of my children, I need to reignite and continue this journey towards my own Self. I am not thinking of it as a “return”. Rather, I’m thinking of it as a part of me that has continued to travel as I have been otherwise occupied. My goal is to change my itinerary such that my current trajectory will, eventually, intersect with that of my Self, join it and, from there, stay together. How do I know this? Well, one indication of this chasm between Self and father-role is my inability to recollect dreams. I know that, if someone measured my brain-activity while I’m asleep, they would find that I’m dreaming. My dreaming is probably no more or less active than that of most other people. But my dreams do not make it into my conscious life. On the rare occasion that they do, I find the experience extremely pleasurable, even if the dream was a scary one. What this tells me is that, even in my sleep I am all task, role, determination and plans. My consciousness is not allowing any interference from my unconscious and, faced with that much resistance, my unconscious has retreated. Another indication of this dynamic is that the things I used to do, things that, arguably, do function as windows and doors to my unconscious, creative and spiritual Self, have slowly fallen by the way side. Most notably my connection with music—listening, singing, playing the guitar and the piano—are no longer in my life. When I try, they quickly feel tedious, hard and no longer life-giving. Another indication for me is my sense of envy and yearning when I hear or see someone who is so obviously connected to his or her Self. I love having friends like that around me. In many ways they are an inspiration. But sometimes I also leave a time of being with them with a strong sense of being a traitor to my own Self. There journeys are a reminder that I am not completely on course in my own life. A few years ago, I decided to take piano lessons again, with a person who inspired me just in that way. Her ways of teaching felt simultaneously encouraging and challenging. I had very high expectations for myself. I was hoping especially that I would find again those spaces that I had inhabited as a pre-teen while practicing the piano. Those were spaces of almost complete and absolute oblivion to the world. In those spaces I would learn to play a song while also being swept away with its emerging personality and its effects on my soul. I would have loved to find those spaces again. But it did not work. Practicing felt just tedious, never joyful. And my lessons were framed by such a strong fear of failure that I could hardly play in front of my teacher. Up to this point I had always interpreted my shame around this as shame about failure of mastery. I thought it was about the piece I was attempting to play. Maybe it was too complicated, too far beyond my skill. But I recognize now that my shame was about my failure to tap into my Self. One day, I was attempting to play a pretty simple tune. I could not. I began to cry. She sat next to me, just waiting. I really wanted for her to hug me, hold me, tell me that it was okay, that I would, in due course, regain my soul. She did not. She asked what I thought was going on, but I couldn’t say. I know now that the hug that I wanted from her was an embrace I needed to give myself. But that part of me was not around. That ability was paralyzed. My muse was silent and almost dead. I felt deeply embarrassed and ashamed. How far had I let this go? No explanation about how little time I had to practice, how hard it was to settle down was sufficient to explain what I knew was going on: I had not taken care of my Self for a long time. I had allowed the garden of my Self to be completely overgrown by weeds, and then had stopped irrigating it altogether, it had turned into a desert. Now I was expecting it to produce a varied jungle of beautiful, succulent plants. Realistically I should have been happy about a single leave of grass growing there. Which did grow. But it felt shamefully sparse.

So, as I am nearing Frankfurt, and as I am simply becoming more used to the fact of my current aloneness, I am also realizing that I have not had many consistent models for what I am actually looking for. My blood-relatives are all, more or less, task-and role-oriented. They’re driven not so much by their dreams but by what they need to do, often for others. I married someone who is arguably more in touch with her creative, spiritual Self than anyone in my family. But she has struggled with that Self as it has always threatened to take over that part in her that is so absurdly strong in me: my ability to inhabit a role. I have to admit to myself that my decision to marry her was likely motivated by the same feeling I had sitting on the piano-bench with my teacher: I wanted to be “embraced” by her in order to fill that hole of creativity and spirituality in me. While that may be understandable, it really isn’t useful and does not work. I have to find my own creative dynamic, my tears, my pleasure, my willingness to take risks. One way perhaps in which this trajectory of Self can and needs to intersect with my trajectory as a father is by seeing that my sons will grow up impoverished, if they don’t see and experience in their father the deep satisfaction that can come from engaging with one’s spiritual dynamic. I really do want to give that to them. It’s more important to me than funding their college experience. I hope I still can.