While at the beach in California, I reread Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gift From the Sea.” I’d forgotten just how many gems that book contains! The biggest “gift” this book offers is timeless wisdom. Who would have thought that a book written 54 years ago would have just as much, and maybe even more, relevance today–but it does! The entire book touched me as deeply as past readings of it–I’m still letting the various themes settle in my mind.
Something that really struck a deep chord had to do with solitude and fragmentation. In the chapter entitled “Moon Shell,” Anne Morrow Lindbergh discussed woman’s (and man’s) need for alone time and yet how much we avoid solitude in order to not feel alone. She quotes the poet Rilke who said about the state of solitude that it is “not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so. That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. Naturally, we will turn giddy.”
Think of all the ways we avoid feeling alone. At the time this book was written, there was the telephone, television and radio to distract us when we weren’t surrounded by others. Today, we have even more tools and gadgets for distraction–we even take our cell phones and computers with us wherever we go!
Anne Morrow Lindbergh states, “The answer is not in going back, in putting woman in the home and giving her the broom and the needle again. A number of mechanical aids save us time and energy. But neither is the answer in dissipating our time and energy in more purposeless occupations, more accumulations which supposedly simplify life but actually burden it, more possessions which we have not time to use or appreciate, more diversions to fill up the void. In other words, the answer is not in the feverish pursuit of centrifugal activities which only lead in the end to fragmentation. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one’s own.
“Solitude…these are pursuits and virtues of the past. But done in another way today because done consciously, aware, with eyes open. Not done as before, as part of the pattern of the time. Revolutionary, in fact, because almost every trend and pressure, every voice from the outside is against this new way of inward living. Woman must be the pioneer in turning inward for strength. In a sense she has always been the pioneer. Men too are being forced to look inward–to find inner solutions as well as outer ones. Perhaps this change marks a new stage of maturity for modern extrovert, activist, materialistic Western man.”
I believe the challenge today is even more difficult than 50 years ago because the external pulls are greater and run deeper. The pull is even strong for our children who have so many distractions that leave them little time to dream–something that I was able to enjoy as a child.
It is not necessary for us to give up our modern conveniences or the ways we are able to connect with the world we live in. However, we must make sure to give ourselves the gift of solitude–time to be alone with ourselves in order that we can feel whole, centered and grounded. The more we are able to connect with ourselves, the more we have to give to others.
As Anne Morrow Lindbergh committed to, I also promise to “try to be alone for part of each year, even a week or a few days; and for part of each day, even for an hour or a few minutes in order to keep my core, my center, my island-quality. Unless I keep the island-quality intact somewhere within me, I will have little to give my husband, my children, my friends or the world at large. Woman must be still as the axis of a wheel in the midst of her activities; she must be the pioneer in achieving this stillness, not only for her own salvation, but for the salvation of family life, of society, perhaps even of our civilization.”
So how many minutes can you give yourself today?
