As I spend many a day and night alone at home, many have asked how do I manage to be alone. Occasionally when my granddaughter calls to ask when I was coming over, I make sure I am there for her. Children really can bring cheer and happiness to one. Otherwise, I am with my own thoughts, blogging, and trying desperately to meditate.
Swami Chinmayananda in his book "As I Think", published by the Central Chinmaya Mission Trust, Bombay 1985 describes being alone as fear that strikes many.
"Solitude to the modern man is a disastrous threat. to be alone in a quiet place and spend an evening all by himself is almost a painful tragedy to many a young man of our times", writes the Swami. The loneliness that is dreaded by many is the joyous solitude of others he says. "We merely demand a crowd always to be around us"', he adds as opposed to what we could enjoy if only we looked the other way. He beautifully describes "the hilarious laughter and joy and the glorious company of nature" as follows.
"The joyous serenade of leaves, the giggling dance of the rippling waters along rocky distances, the galloping waves restlessly stamping the surface of the seas, the queenly moon gracefully gliding across the soulful nights, the nodding flowers in bunches waiting to watch the procession of the day, the colorful sunset hesitating to leave the luxurious golden splash of the western sky, none, none of them has a message for a majority of us."
He goes on to describe nature in beautiful terms, "the hilarious laughter in nature, the boisterous music in the wind, the sonorous discourses of the ocean, and the prattlings of the woods." He brings us to ask ourselves when was the last time we looked up at the sky, gazed at the stars, and saw the moon. Yesterday my granddaughter and I soaked ourselves in the pouring rain, with her dancing to the tune of the raindrops and accompanying it with a self-made tune interspersed with her laughter. Joining her I became young too. I always tell the youths who come over to AVM that I prefer their company for I am rejuvenated by their youth and vigor.
He asks that we return and be reeducated to enjoy the harmony in nature, the melody of life, the orchestra of the sounds in the air. "Such a man starts recognizing an infinite and a deep friendliness with everything, sentient and insentient, around, a feeling of utter love enveloping him all around as a divine atmosphere." We are never alone in a sense. We associate life to man and animal forgetting that plants rock and everything around us is alive and changing each moment.
"From this point of view, the individual rising from himself comes to watch the whole world as a tiny speck in the universe and the entire universe itself as a meagre pinhead in the milky way. In this wonderful vision who can feel ever lonely."
A story is told of how a devotee wanting to start a conversation with Yogi Ramsuratkumar points to the exceptionally bright moon in the sky expecting the yogi to look his way. But the yogi kept looking the other way. After several attempts at describing the beauty of the moon and failing to draw the yogi's attention towards the sky as he viewed it, the yogi shuts him up by replying that he saw seven moons in the direction he was looking. We shall never know what is beyond our normal vision.