Category Archives for "Solitude"

Chocolate Cake

My mother’s chocolate cake was the best ever.  I miss it to this day and I’ve never seen, let alone tasted, the like since she died.  It was a simple 444 Victoria Sponge with added cocoa and cooked in two tins.  A layer of melted chocolate on one and then the other on top, iced with more melted chocolate.  The chocolate cracked as the knife cut into the cake.

My mother was a good all-round cook, never afraid to experiment.  The experiments didn’t always go well.  This was signified by my father’s “I’ll be glad when I’ve had enough of this!”

I learned to cook and experiment too.  I could mention deep fried lamb’s sweetbreads (never calves!) with home-made tartare sauce.    One day I decided to surprise my mother by following a recipe I found for vanilla ice cream.  It was very rich, made with several eggs and loads of cream.  Then it had to be frozen, stirred and refrozen several times.  We all sat down to sample it and it was vile.  Not slightly off but inedible vile!  My mother investigated and found that what I thought was vanilla essence was Friars Balsam!  (It’s an expectorant and used on cuts and grazes.  Tincture of benzoin.)

My Secondary School was High Storrs.  Imagine a huge rectangular building with two central quads.  When I arrived at the school in 1966, it was impossible to walk round the building inside because it was split into two halves, a boys school and a girls.  Times were changing and a few years later we went co-ed and the doors were opened.

I wish I could say I enjoyed my time there.  Bullying was unrelenting and brutal.  I lived in fear for several years.  The thing that puzzles me is why, given all this, when they announced boys could do domestic science, only one did. 

I don’t remember much about it.  Not what we cooked, who else was there (the girls probably viewed me as odd) or even how long I did it for.  I risked further victimisation because I wanted to cook. 

Why did I make this choice?  I knew it would leave me further exposed and vulnerable and yet I chose to do it.  I wish I could represent this as an act of courage but it seems to me now, all these years later that it served to further isolate me from others.  I insisted on going my own way but at the same time I was terrified.  My refusal to submit led to fear and isolation.    And yet what other choice did I have?

Day 1/21 of my writing challenge. Every weekday, I shall publish a short piece of writing on my subject of solitude. The writings are based on a prompt from Megan Macedo, who leads the challenge. These are all first drafts with minimal revision. Please comment if you find these posts helpful. Previous is Isolation and Solitude. Next is Not Washing Up!

Isolation and Solitude

Way back in the early 90s, I discovered the Enneagram, a personality typing tool.  Over the years it has helped me understand my behaviour.  Why I make the same mistakes over and again.

My type is 5, which will mean nothing to you if you don’t know the Enneagram.  Suffice it to say, 5s are withdrawing types who left to our own devices (yes please!) live our lives in our heads, rarely sharing the wonderful insights, ideas and worlds we hatch in our privacy.

We are plagued by the tension between isolation and solitude, especially as we often don’t quite know which one we’re experiencing.  This is the tension I want to explore and especially how to find solitude and the riches all of us gain from it.

This is not just for 5s, we all handle isolation and solitude in different ways.  So, it is something we need to understand at some level.  So, allow me to define terms as best I can.  I’m no expert in whatever it is I need to be an expert in to understand this tension.  So, I define my own terms and if that annoys you, either ignore me or allow yourself to join the journey higgledy piggledy. 

I use the word isolation in a negative way.  To be isolated is rarely a positive experience, although I suspect many of us attain isolation without noticing and carry on that way for many years.  Even once we notice, it is easy to slip back again.  It’s an everyday experience for most of us.

It’s easy to be isolated in company and indeed if there are loads of people around all the time, it is hard to see your isolation.  Isolated people are insecure and isolation manifests as taking charge, as being in control.  I suspect this is what we mean by individualism.  The top of the social hierarchy can be the loneliest place in the world.

And loneliness is another kind of isolation.  Now you are aware of isolation and can’t bear it.  Television, mobile phones, social media are all means to assuage loneliness.  Even a good book. 

Isolation is in short, a journey centred on myself – my pain and my attempts to assuage it.  We imagine ourselves alone, defiant, people of destiny, resisting the incursions of a world gone mad.  But are we contributing to that madness?

So, what is solitude?  It’s finding a space wherein we can be creative and live not for ourselves but for others.  It’s a space we have to seek and find and maintain intentionally.  It is where our hearts expand and meet the hearts of others. 

We all need this space and many take great steps to find it.  The gardener who perhaps buries herself in an allotment, the writer with a shed at the end of the garden, the rambler, the fisherman.  All these and many others find the space where they can live for others. 

But they’re on their own?  Indeed.  But once you find your space, you can leave it and re-join it as you will.

Just a couple of other points and I’ll allow you to retreat to your space.  This series is about solitude as a creative space.  I’ll touch on the negative side of things but this is not about mental health.  Not mental health because I know little about it and want to focus on the positives (not easy for a Grumpy Old Man).  I am aware that loneliness and individualism can be associated with mental health conditions.  But I want to show how these affect all of us and in the main they are experiences we all encounter in our daily lives.  I’m interested in solitude as a spiritual condition and not a mental condition.

Which brings me to religion.  This is harder to unpick for me because I’m a Methodist Local Preacher and I can see how this topic resonates with my faith.  But I don’t think it matters whether you subscribe to a faith.  We still need to find solitude.  Most of the world’s faiths encourage prayer or meditation.  These are always about finding solitude as a place to encounter … what?  A boring Methodist worship service may be an ideal place to find solitude!

I think of religion as spirituality put into action.  The challenge for all of us is to find the space of solitude and then to turn that positive energy into something constructive.  How we do that is the challenge we all face.  Over the next 4 weeks I shall try to share my journey.  And maybe it will inspire you.

This is Day 0 of a 21 day writing challenge. Every weekday, I shall publish a short piece of writing on my subject of solitude. The writings are based on a prompt from Megan Macedo, who leads the challenge. These are all first drafts with minimal revision. Please comment if you find these posts helpful. View the next: Chocolate Cake.