On Solitude

This piece reads like some westerner that hasn't practiced meditation in any way before. Which imo, leads to the stupid trap that a lot of westerners like to believe in meditation and make an effort to do it as some sort of "healthy" lifestyle choice (a la Sam Harris; although I do admire his work). Just because you did a retreat for a few weeks by no means opened the stars in your eyes and changed the world. You're not special, we all die. The fact that you came to some profound conclusion on your own is not any more special than someone else going to lunch at McDonalds for the day. Solitude for some reason is championed as some sort of virtuous among westerners, but seen as a weird thing if it's done too much, thus canceling out it's positive aspect. Why? Because you become a self centered asshole that's why.

Jim Carey has a quote on it and I 100% wholly agree with it:"Solitude is dangerous. It’s very addictive. It becomes a habit after you realize how peaceful and calm it is. It’s like you don’t want to deal with people anymore because they drain your energy."

I bring this up because I myself have been a borderline schizoid through middle school through college. All it did was made the world flat and filled with pessimism for myself. You begin to really see and understand the world for what it is...except you have no power to influence it to work for you. You get stuck in a rut that makes you go back and hide in your solitude of misery. You realize it's a safe space for any thinking and engagement. But you forget to interact with people.

From 10-21, I said a rosary, various other prayers, and read the bible, and then reflected on that piece of scripture in my life or just let my mind wander while I read it. Every. Single. Day. If I missed for whatever weird reason, I made up for it by doing it twice that next day, which was extremely rare. What you learn in solitude, you ignore in real life. What you don't know in real life, increases your anxieties in solitude. Leading to a viscous cycle of self centered cynicism.

The biggest irony about all these western revelations about solitude are the exact things religions that exist have been preaching for centuries. Praying to god or going "ohm" for 2 hours at the end of the day achieves the same objective in that you pretend like what you're doing is beneficial when in reality it's not and it's just a waste of time.

- Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

- Dulce María Loynaz, Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems

- Virginia Woolf, Selected Diaries

- Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972

I don't think this is the reason.

I think it might be more to do with a woman coming across some weird men in the woods and being unable to lean on civilisation to keep the men from being psychologically or physically abusive.

The danger isn't nature. That's the same for men and women

(though you might argue a case that women are more susceptible to hypothermia... but I highly doubt anyone thinks about that).

This is going to be controversial but I think the reality is that society caters to women a bit more than men; so the woods and going back to nature, for men, is an escape. But for women (and speaking very generally) it's more a feeling of removing of safety and comfort.

Annie Dillard: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction.

St Teresa of Avila’s writings cover the topic indirectly at least.