Thanks to Alan Creech for passing along this quote from Thomas Merton:
...the only justification for a life of deliberate solitude is the conviction that it will help you to love not only God but also other men. If you go into the desert merely to get away from people you dislike, you will find neither peace nor solitude; you will only isolate yourself with a tribe of devils.The great temptation of modern man is not physical solitude but immersion in the mass of other men, not escape to the mountains or the desert (would that more men were so tempted!) but escape into the formless sea of irresponsibility which is the crowd. There is actually no more dangerous solitude than that of the man who is lost in a crowd, who does not know he is alone and who does not function as a person in a community either.
Mere living in the midst of other men does not guarantee that we live in communion with them or even in communion with them or even in communication with them.
Where men live huddled together without true communication, there seems to be greater sharing, and a more genuine communion. But this is not communion, only immersion in the general meaninglessness of countless slogans and cliches repeated over and over again so without thinking. ...He does not act, he is pushed. He does not talk, he produces conventional sounds when stimulated by the appropriate noises. He does not think, he secretes cliches.
Mere living alone does not isolate a man, mere living together does not bring men into communion. The common life can either make one more of a person or less of a person, depending whether it is truly common life or merely life in a crowd. To live in communion, in genuine dialogue with others is absolutely necessary if man is to remain human. But to live in the midst of others, sharing, nothing with them but the common noise and the general distractions, isolates a man in the worst way, separates him from reality in a way that is almost painless. It divides him off and separates from other men and from his true self.
There is no true solitude except interior solitude. And interior solitude is not possible for anyone who does not accept his right place in relation to other men.
- Thomas Merton; New Seeds of Contemplation
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