The Voices of Solitude

                                          The Voices of Solitude

 

 

In order to hear that voice, we have to be fiercely independent. Not in the way the world wants you to be, but independent of the very same voice that the world wants of you. To be free of the world then, independent of its pull- bury it and redeem it. Sanctify the world with your voice. A personal vocation for all of us but one worth having if we are ever to quell the struggles within that come from outside us.

 

Emerson has much to say about this and in many ways Emerson says more than any one of us will ever fully get, even after years of reading him. And yet, what he says is so simple we miss his cue if we don’t take the time to simplify the words he wrote. I have an essay before me that speaks of this very thing and it is my hope that I can bring it home, light the fireplace and distill the vignettes out of it. It is a cold night; I have the time and the book before me. Here then lays the thrust of the essay.

 

He called it Self Reliance, and points us first towards what that really means. It means to speak as a child does, without restraint, without worry. Simple minds need nothing more. Jesus has something similar to say. Let your answer be yes or no spoke the Lord, like children. Interesting that Emerson picks up on this when he says that: “he cumbers himself never about consequences,

about interests: he gives an independent genuine verdict.”  Oh, to be a child! Its part nonchalance and part moxy, but it is a little if nothing more than the way of children. The honesty of that statement struck me and if given the chance to start over I think I would see that most of the problems I have acquired came about because I failed to see and follow this maxim; be yourself.

 

Emerson continues in this vein and does a good job of admonishing us with the second quote. He explains where we went wrong, how we lost that childlike innocence so necessary for entering heaven. I quote- “These are the voices we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.” Why should we ever want to lose innocence? It is the very thing we need to get to heaven. The scripture speaks of becoming lambs, sheep, children, led to the slaughter, self-immolation. Why then do we stray? That very line sums it up. We give it up for the world. We let it speak for us instead of us-speaking against it.

 

And that is the why of it. We are not independent of the world. It’s thoughts and maxims speak louder than our conscience speaks and wraps us in the very thing that children despise the most.

Rules.

 

Enough rules. There is but one true rule as we were all taught and as Emerson speaks of. It is the one rule that will supercede all written rules. It is the one rule that binds them all together. I myself will bind to that rule and make myself independent of the world for the simple reason that it cannot provide. I will be a trusting child of God. I will stake my claim for independence.