Love your Solitude

Down with the flu. I wanted to go to the Camberwell Market to shop for some antiques, but I'm stuck at home.

I read this article and from it this quotation by Rainer M. Rilke.

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.

 Be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend.

Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.

And don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

I wish I could take confidence in this. But right now I'm feeling terribly alone. I'm finding that I do not connect anymore with a lot of my friends. I don't like their humor. I don't even like their company. And for the most part I see them as hypocrites.

I feel like I've wasted a good part of my life caring for a close relative who hates me and who seeks my destruction. I've sacrificed my youth and my fortune for this one person - and she treats it dismissively as if it was an expected deed. Meanwhile I'm watching her drive her car down to Peredition and taking me along for the ride. I've got to get off.

My life is being bled away on useless things - even the gardening. I feel trapped. I feel lost. I read my old blog posts and god help me but I'm still talking about the same damn things for the last 13 years.

I believe in God and believe that He has a plan for me. But I'm feeling right now a distinct sense of dread - as if something horrible is waiting for me around the corner and that He is there laughing at me or like my father expecting me to do what I cannot do.

I used to read stories about Joseph and Moses in the Old Testament and take heart from them - but lately I'm increasingly worried that its just self-delusion.

I really need to get a move on. Get out of Australia and back to Singapore. I'm being suffocated here. I must get out.