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It Is A Difficult Lesson To Learn Today-to Leave One's Friends And Family And Deliberately Practice The Art Of Solitude For An Hour Or A Day Or A Week. And Yet, Once It Is Done, I Find There Is A Quality To Being Alone That Is Incredibly Precious. Life Rushes Back Into The Void, Richer, More Vivid, Fuller Than Before.

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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It Is A Difficult

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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It Is A Difficult Lesson To Learn Today-to Leave One's Friends And Family And Deliberately Practice The Art Of Solitude For An Hour Or A Day Or A Week. And Yet, Once It Is Done, I Find There Is A Quality To Being Alone That Is Incredibly Precious. Life Rushes Back Into The Void, Richer, More Vivid, Fuller Than Before.

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The Artist Knows He Must Be Alone To Create; The Writer, To Work Out His Thoughts; The Musician, To Compose; The Saint, To Pray. But Women Need Solitude In Order To Find Again The True Essence Of Themselves.

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Forsythia Is Pure Joy. There Is Not An Ounce, Not A Glimmer Of Sadness Or Even Knowledge In Forsythia. Pure, Undiluted, Untouched Joy.

Men Kick Friendship Around Like A Football, But It Doesn't Seem To Crack. Women Treat It Like Glass And It Goes To Pieces.

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... Writing Letters Is Thinking, Just As Talking To You Is Thinking.

What A Commentary On Our Civilization, When Being Alone Is Considered Suspect; When One Has To Apologize For It, Make Excuses, Hide The Fact That One Practices It—like A Secret Vice!

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One Must Lose One's Life To Find It.

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Certain Springs Are Tapped Only When We Are Alone. Women Need Solitude In Order To Find Again The True Essence Of Themselves; That Firm Strand Which Will Be The Indispensable Center Of A Whole Web Of Human Relationships.

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Is There Anything As Horrible As Starting On A Trip? Once You're Off, That's All Right, But The Last Moments Are Earthquake And Convulsion, And The Feeling That You Are A Snail Being Pulled Off Your Rock.

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It Is A Difficult Lesson To Learn Today-to Leave One's Friends And Family And Deliberately Practice The Art Of Solitude For An Hour Or A Day Or A Week. And Yet, Once It Is Done, I Find There Is A Quality To Being Alone That Is Incredibly Precious. Life Rushes Back Into The Void, Richer, More Vivid, Fuller Than Before.

But I Want First Of All- In Fact, As An End To These Other Desires- To Be At Peace With Myself.

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There Is No Harvest For The Heart Alone. The Seed Of Love Must Be Eternally Re-sown.

I Find There Is A Quality To Being Alone That Is Incredibly Precious. Life Rushes Back Into The Void, Richer, More Vivid, Fuller Than Before.

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Richness Of Life

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Interdependence

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It Isn't For The Moment You Are Struck That You Need Courage, But For That Long Uphill Climb Back To Sanity And Faith And Security.

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We Americans, With Our Terrific Emphasis On Youth, Action, And Material Success, Certainly Tend To Belittle The Afternoon Of Life And Even To Pretend It Never Comes. We Push The Clock Back And Try To Prolong The Morning, Over-reaching And Over-straining Ourselves In The Unnatural Effort. ... In Our Breathless Attempts We Often Miss The Flowering That Waits For Afternoon.

People Talk About 'sex' As Though It Hopped About By Itself, Like A Frog!

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Fame Is A Kind Of Death Because It Arrests Life Around The Person In The Public Eye. If One Is Recognized Everywhere, One Begins To Feel Like Medusa. People Stop Their Normal Life And Actions And Freeze Into Staring Manikins. "we Can Never Catch People Or Life Unawares," As I Wrote To My Mother, In An Outburst Of Frustration. "it Is Always Looking At Us."

One Learns To Accept The Fact That No Permanent Return Is Possible To An Old Form Of Relationship; And, More Deeply Still, That There Is No Holding Of A Relationship To A Single Form. This Is Not Tragedy But Part Of The Ever-recurrent Miracle Of Life And Growth.

America, Which Has The Most Glorious Present Still Existing In The World Today, Hardly Stops To Enjoy It, In Her Insatiable Appetite For The Future.

Purposeful Giving Is Not As Apt To Deplete One's Resources; It Belongs To That Natural Order Of Giving That Seems To Renew Itself Even In The Act Of Depletion.

The Punctuation Of Anniversaries Is Terrible, Like The Closing Of Doors, One After Another Between You And What You Want To Hold On To.

Certain Springs Are Tapped Only When You're Alone.

Woman Must Be The Pioneer In This Turning Inward For Strength. In A Sense, She Has Always Been The Pioneer.

People Talk About Love As If It Were Something You Could Give, Like An Armful Of Flowers.

A Note Of Music Gains Significance From The Silence On Either Side.

My Diaries Were Written Primarily, I Think, Not To Preserve The Experience But To Savor It, To Make It Even More Real, More Visible And Palpable, Than In Actual Life. For In Our Family An Experience Was Not Finished, Not Truly Experienced, Unless Written Down Or Shared With Another.

The Best Marriages, Like The Best Lives, Were Both Happy And Unhappy. There Was Even A Kind Of Necessary Tension, A Certain Tautness Between The Partners That Gave The Marriage Strength, Like The Tautness Of A Full Sail. You Went Forward On It.

Failures Aren't Failures If You Learn Something From Them.

When One Is A Stranger To Oneself Then One Is Estranged From Others Too. If One Is Out Of Touch With Oneself, Then One Cannot Touch Others. Only When One Is Connected To One's Own Core Is.

Loneliness And Solitude

Life Is A Gift, Given In Trust - Like A Child.

How Inexplicable It Seems. Anything Else Will Be Accepted As A Better Excuse. If One Sets Aside Time For A Business Appointment, A Trip To The Hairdresser, A Social Engagement Or A Shopping Expedition, That Time Is Accepted As Inviolable. But If One Says: I Cannot Come Because That Is My Hour To Be Alone, One Is Considered Rude, Egotistical Or Strange.

Woman Must Come Of Age By Herself. This Is The Essence Of 'coming Of Age'-to Learn How To Stand Alone. She Must Learn Not To Depend On Another, Nor To Feel She Must Prove Her Strength By Competing With Another. In The Past, She Has Swung Between These Two Opposite Poles Of Dependence And Competition, Of Victorianism And Feminism. Both Extremes Throw Her Off Balance; Neither Is The Center, The True Center Of Being A Whole Woman. She Must Find Her True Center Alone. She Must Become Whole.

Guys Kick Friendship All Over Just Like A Soccer, Nonetheless It Does Not Appear To Crack. Girls Deal With It Like Glass And It Goes To Items.

One Must Go Through Periods Of Numbness That Are Harder To Bear Than Grief.

There Comes A Moment When The Things One Has Written, Even A Traveler's Memories, Stand Up And Demand A Justification. They Require An Explanation. They Query, 'who Am I? What Is My Name? Why Am I Here?

Why Do Progress And Beauty Have To Be So Opposed?

Eternally, Woman Spills Herself Away In Driblets To The Thirsty, Seldom Being Allowed The Time, The Quiet, The Peace, To Let The Pitcher Fill Up To The Brim.

... Once You Get Beyond The Crust Of The First Pang It Is All The Same And You Can Easily Bear It. It Is Just The Transition From Painlessness To Pain That Is So Terrible.

It Is Nice To Think How One Can Be Recklessly Lost In A Daisy!

After All, I Don't See Why I Am Always Asking For Private, Individual, Selfish Miracles When Every Year There Are Miracles Like White Dogwood.

Duration Is Not A Test Of Truth Or Falsehood.

Who Is Not Afraid Of Pure Space - That Breathtaking Empty Space Of An Open Door?

And One Perfect Day Can Give Clues For A More Perfect Life.

The Sea Does Not Reward Those Who Are Too Anxious, Too Greedy, Or Too Impatient. One Should Lie Empty, Open, Choiceless As A Beach - Waiting For A Gift From The Sea.

We Walk Up The Beach Under The Stars. And When We Are Tired Of Walking, We Lie Flat On The Sand Under A Bowl Of Stars. We Feel Stretched, Expanded To Take In Their Compass. They Pour Into Us Until We Are Filled With Stars, Up To The Brim.

The Shape Of My Life Is, Of Course, Determined By Many Things; My Background And Childhood, My Mind And Its Education, My Conscience And Its Pressures, My Heart And Its Desires.

It Is Terribly Amusing How Many Different Climates Of Feelings One Can Go Through In One Day.

It Is The Striving After Perfection That Makes One An Artist. It Is The Sense That One Is Imperfect, Unfulfilled, Unfinished. One Attempts By A Superhuman Effort To Fill The Gap, To Leap Over It, To Finish It In Another Medium. And One Creates A Third And Separate Thing: 'adventure Rarely Reaches Its Predetermined End. Columbus Never Reached China. But He Discovered America.

Women Need Solitude In Order To Find Again The True Essence Of Themselves.

The Collector Walks With Blinders On; He Sees Nothing But The Prize. In Fact, The Acquisitive Instinct Is Incompatible With True Appreciation Of Beauty.

I Do Not Believe That Sheer Suffering Teaches. If Suffering Alone Taught, All The World Would Be Wise, Since Everyone Suffers. To Suffering Must Be Added Mourning, Understanding, Patience, Love, Openness And The Willingness To Remain Vulnerable.

Woman's Normal Occupations In General Run Counter To Creative Life, Or Contemplative Life, Or Saintly Life.

Contemplative Life

War Is A Thug's Game. The Thug Strikes First And Harder. He Doesn't Go By Rules And He Isn't Afraid Of Hurting People.

... The Most Ordinary Everyday Living Is As Delicate, As Breath-taking, As Difficult, Takes As Terrific Physical And Mental Control And Effort, As Walking A Tightrope.

Flowers Always Have It - Poise, Completion, Fulfillment, Perfection . . .

Nothing Feeds The Center Of Being So Much As Creative Work. The Curtain Of Mechanization Has Come Down Between The Mind And The Hand.

No New Sect Ever Had Humor; No Disciples Either, Even The Disciples Of Christ.

I Believe That True Identity Is Found . . . In Creative Activity Springing From Within. It Is Found, Paradoxically, When One Loses Oneself. Woman Can Best Refind Herself In Some Kind Of Creative Activity Of Her Own.

When The Heart Is Flooded With Love There Is No Room In It For Fear, For Doubt, For Hesitation.

If You Surrender Completely To The Moments As They Pass, You Live More Richly Those Moments.

Focus And Concentration

Only When One Is Connected To One's Own Core Is One Connected To Others, I Am Beginning To Discover. And, For Me, The Core, The Inner Spring, Can Best Be Refound Through Solitude.

For It Is Only Framed In Space That Beauty Blooms. Only In Space Are Events And Objects And People Unique And Significant-and Therefore Beautiful. A Tree Has Significance If One Sees It Against The Empty Face Of Sky. A Note In Music Gains Significance From The Silences On Either Side. A Candle Flowers In The Space Of Night. Even Small And Casual Things Take On Significance If They Are Washed In Space, Like A Few Autumn Grasses In One Corner Of An Oriental Painting, The Rest Of The Page Bare.

I Feel I Should Not Be ... So At The Mercy Of People's Regard. And Yet - It Is The Artist's Desire For Communication Too; Without The Answering Voice You Get So Numb; You Lose Faith In Your Powers To Communicate.

Too Many People, Too Many Demands, Too Much To Do; Competent, Busy, Hurrying People - It Just Isn't Living At All.

Him That I Love, I Wish To Be Free -- Even From Me.

Great Problems That Face The World Today In Both The Private And The Public Sphere Cannot Be Solved By Women – Or By Men – Alone. They Can Only Be Surmounted By Men And Women Side By Side.

When One Is A Stranger To Oneself, Then One Is Estranged From Others, Too. If One Is Out Of Touch With Oneself, Then One Cannot Touch Others. Only When One Is Connected To One's Own Core, Is One Connected To Others. And For Me, The Core, The Inner Spring, Can Best Be Re-found Through Silence.

People "died" All The Time. . . . Parts Of Them Died When They Made The Wrong Kinds Of Decisions-decisions Against Life. Sometimes They Died Bit By Bit Until Finally They Were Just Living Corpses Walking Around. If You Were Perceptive You Could See It In Their Eyes; The Fire Had Gone Out. . . You Always Knew When You Made A Decision Against Life. The Door Clicked And You Were Safe Inside-safe And Dead.

And If Flying, Like A Glass-bottomed Bucket, Can Give You That Vision, That Seeing Eye, Which Peers Down On The Still World Below The Choppy Waves - It Will Always Remain Magic.

If It Is A Woman's Function To Give, She Must Be Replenished, Too.

You Can’t Just Write And Write And Put Things In A Drawer. They Wither Without The Warm Sun Of Someone Else’s Appreciation.

When We Start At The Center Of Ourselves, We Discover Something Worthwhile Extending Toward The Periphery Of The Circle. We Find Again Some Of The Joy In The Now, Some Of The Peace In The Here, Some Of The Love In Me And Thee Which Go To Make Up The Kingdom Of Heaven On Earth.

I Must Try To Be Alone For Part Of Each Year...and Part Of Each Day...in Order To Keep My Core, My Center...women Must Be Still As The Axis Of A Wheel In The Midst Of Her Activities. She Must Be The Pioneer Of Achieving This Stillness, Not Only For Her Own Salvation, But For The Salvation Of Family Life, Of Society, Perhaps Even Of Our Civilization.

For It Is Only Framed In Space That Beauty Blooms.

There Is No Aristocracy Of Grief. Grief Is A Great Leveler.

I Sometimes Think That Perhaps Our Minds Are Too Weak To Grasp Joy Or Sorrow Except In Small Things...in The Big Things Joy And Sorrow Are Just Alike - Overwhelming. At Least, We Only Get Them Bit By Bit, In Tiny Flashes - In Waves - That Our Minds Can't Stand For Very Long. P 199

Flying Was A Very Tangible Freedom. In Those Days, It Was Beauty, Adventure, Discovery - The Epitome Of Breaking Into New Worlds.

When You Love Someone You Do Not Love Them, All The Time, In The Exact Same Way, From Moment To Moment. It Is An Impossibility. It Is A Lie To Pretend To. And Yet This Is Exactly What Most Of Us Demand. We Have So Little Faith In The Ebb And Flow Of Life, Of Love, Of Relationships.

When You Love Someone

Don't Wish Me Happiness - I Don't Expect To Be Happy It's Gotten Beyond That, Somehow. Wish Me Courage And Strength And A Sense Of Humor - I Will Need Them All.

It Was A Magic Caused By The Collision Of Modern Methods And Old Ones; Modern History And Ancient; Accessibility And Isolation. And It Was A Magic Which Could Only Strike Spark About That Time. A Few Years Earlier, From The Point Of View Of Aircraft Alone, It Would Have Been Impossible To Reach These Places; A Few Later, And There Will Be No Such Isolation.

Prison Life Taught Him How Little One Can Get Along With, And What Extraordinary Spiritual Freedom And Peace Such Simplification Can Bring. I Remember Again, Ironically, That Today More Of Us In The World Have The Luxury Of Choice Between Simplicity And Complication Of Life. And For The Most Part, We, Who Could Choose Simplicity, Choose Complication. War, Prison, Survival Periods, Enforce A Form Of Simplicity On Us. The Monk And The Nun Choose It Of Their Own Free Will. But If One Accidentally Finds It, As I Have For A Few Days, One Finds Also The Serenity It Brings.

Yesterday I Sat In A Field Of Violets For A Long Time Perfectly Still, Until I Really Sank Into It - Into The Rhythm Of The Place, I Mean - Then When I Got Up To Go Home I Couldn't Walk Quickly Or Evenly Because I Was Still In Time With The Field.

In The Sheltered Simplicity Of The First Days After A Baby Is Born, One Sees Again The Magical Closed Circle, The Miraculous Sense Of Two People Existing Only For Each Other.

Geniuses Were Like Storms Or Cyclones, Pulling Everything Into Their Path, Sticks And Stones And Dust.

Perhaps Middle-age Is, Or Should Be, A Period Of Shedding Shells; The Shell Of Ambition, The Shell Of Material Accumulations And Possessions, The Shell Of The Ego.

Certain Environments, Certain Modes Of Life, And Certain Rules Of Conduct Are More Conducive To Inner And Outer Harmony Than Others. There Are, In Fact, Certain Roads That One May Follow. Simplification Is One Of Them.

Marriage Is Tough, Because It Is Woven Of All These Various Elements, The Weak And The Strong. "in Love-ness" Is Fragile For It Is Woven Only With The Gossamer Threads Of Beauty. It Seems To Me Absurd To Talk About "happy" And "unhappy" Marriages.

The Plane Seems Exultant Now, Even Arrogant. We Did It, We Did It! We're Up, Above You. We Were Dependant On You Just Now, Prisoners Fawning On You For Favors, For Wind And Light. But Now, We Are Free. We Are Up! We Are Off! Like Someone Singing Ecstatically, Climbing, Soaring- A Sustained Note Of Power And Joy.

The Present Is Passed Over In The Race For The Future; The Here Is Neglected In Favor Of The There. Enjoy The Moment, Even If It Means Merely A Walk In The Country.

My Father Taught Me That A Bill Is Like A Crying Baby And Has To Be Attended To At Once.

The Fundamental Magic Of Flying, A Miracle That Has Nothing To Do With Any Of Its Practical Purposes - Purposes Of Speed, Accessibility, And Convenience - And Will Not Change As They Change.

No American Can Understand The Need For Time -- That Is, Simply Space To Breathe. If You Have Ten Minutes To Spare You Should Jam That Full Instead Of Leaving It -- As Space Around Your Next Ten Minutes. How Can Anything Ripen Without Those 'empty' Ten Minutes?

Travelers Are Always Discoverers, Especially Those Who Travel By Air. There Are No Signposts In The Sky To Show A Man Has Passed That Way Before. There Are No Channels Marked. The Flier Breaks Each Second Into New Uncharted Seas.

I Must Write It All Out, At Any Cost. Writing Is Thinking. It Is More Than Living, For It Is Being Conscious Of Living.

Go For A Short Walk In A Soft Rain - Lovely - So Many Wild Flowers Startling Me Through The Woods And A Lawn Sprinkled With Dandelions, Like A Night With Stars. And Through It All The Sound Of Soft Rain Like The Sound Of Innumerable Earthworms Stirring In The Ground.

We Tend Not To Choose The Unknown, Which Might Be A Shock Or A Disappointment Or Simply A Little Difficult To Cope With. An Yet It Is The Unknown With All Its Disappointments And Surprises That Is The Most Enriching.

In General, I Feel, Or I Have Come To Feel, That The Richest Writing Comes Not From The People Who Dedicate Themselves To Writing Alone. I Know This Is Contradicted Again And Again But I Continue To Feel It. They Don't, Of Course, Write As Much, Or As Fast, But I Think It Is Riper And More Satisfying When It Does Come. One Of The Difficulties Of Writing Or Doing Any Kind Of Creative Work In America Seems To Me To Be That We Put Such Stress On Production And Material Results. We Put A Time Pressure And A Mass Pressure On Creative Work Which Are Meaningless And Infantile In That Field.

I Would Like To Achieve A State Of Inner Spiritual Grace From Which I Could Function And Give As I Was Meant To In The Eye Of God.

I Had The Feeling . . . That My Experience Was Very Different From Other People’s. (are We All Under This Illusion?)

Woman Can Best Refind Herself By Losing Herself In Some Kind Of Creative Activity Of Her Own.

My Life Cannot Implement In Action The Demands Of All The People To Whom My Heart Responds.

There Is No Sin Punished More Implacably By Nature Than The Sin Of Resistance To Change.

People Talk About Love As Though It Were Something You Could Give, Like An Armful Of Flowers. And A Lot Of People Give Love Like That -- Just Dump It Down On Top Of You, A Useless Strong-scented Burden.

For In Our Family An Experience Was Not Finished, Not Truly Experienced, Unless Written Down Or Shared With Another.

To Mention A Loved Object, A Person, Or A Place To Someone Else Is To Invest That Object With Reality.

One Can Get Just As Much Exultation In Losing Oneself In A Little Thing As In A Big Thing. It Is Nice To Think How One Can Be Recklessly Lost In A Daisy.

Why Is It That You Can Sometimes Feel The Reality Of People More Keenly Through A Letter Than Face To Face?

One Can Never Pay In Gratitude; One Can Only Pay 'in Kind' Somewhere Else In Life.

The World Has Been Forced To Its Knees. Unhappily, We Seldom Find Our Way There Without Being Beaten To It By Suffering.

I Am Beginning To Respect The Apathetic Days. Perhaps They're A Necessary Pause: Better To Give In To Them Than To Fight Them At Your Desk Hopelessly; Then You Lose Both The Day And Your Self-respect. Treat Them As Physical Phenomena -- Casually -- And Obey Them.

I Should Like To Be A Full-time Mother And A Full-time Artist And A Full-time Wife-companion And Also A 'charming Woman' On The Side! And To Be Aware And Record It All. I Cannot Do It All. Something Must Go - Several Things Probably. The 'charming Woman' First!

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