As Epicurus noted in his ‘Leading Doctrines’:
“Number 14: Withdrawal into obscurity is the best form of security.
The simplest means of procuring protection from other men (which is gained to a certain extent by deterrent force) is the security of quiet solitude and withdrawal from the mass of people.”
I feel that as a man you must go into a prolonged period of solitude at least once throughout your life.
Zero distractions.
Zero negativity.
Zero influence.
Just you and your thoughts.
You and your mission.
You will be amazed at the ideas that will emanate, and the things you will create. Most modern men don’t ever have time to be alone with their thoughts.
Let alone multiple weeks straight. When the brain is in this constant state of consumption, it never gets the chance to rest and think for itself. Do you think Aristotle, Darwin, Einstein and other great minds were consuming 30 new pieces of information every minute of every day via all the forms of social media we are plagued by? As I have mentioned in a previous ramble, the modern mind is overstimulated and the modern body is understimulated and overfed. We can remedy this and fix it, through effort and struggle. But also through the strength found through such hardships.
This has been one of the single greatest periods of my adult life in that I had 6 weeks of this exact sort of solitude. Isolation and more accurately elevation require separation. It is necessary for creation, and something I have noticed of late is that it is becoming increasingly easier to be social, but ever more difficult to be in solitude, and exceptional individuals are built in solitude – I firmly believe this.
There is nothing wrong with ‘selfishly’ and determinedly becoming a better person in slivers of solitude, because this invariably becomes our gift to everyone else we encounter on our life’s journey, so just how selfish is it really? I’ve also noticed that truly humbled (not to be confused with just humble) individuals operate and vibrate from a very different place within themselves, and they have a funny way of finding each other and forming friendships and or relationships in their lives – this has happened to me tenfold of late, since I took ownership of my own humility. They speak from a place that both individuals recognise and know, and their words resonate with one another in an eerily familiar sense. Humility is God given at birth, yet we stray so far away from this pure state as life and the world fixes her greedy grip on us, tainting us ever so subtly. I think being humble has taken on varied forms of the definition of late, and of course due to the times we’ve had to navigate as humanity. I think for me personally, just asking for help was me humbling myself enough to receive some sort of help. Humility is a well-spring from where only more good will flow into one’s life, I am certain of this. And I am ever grateful for the small, yet genuine network of individuals that I have found to be not just my help, but more accurately with certain individuals, my salvation. They come in all forms, all shapes and to an extent all spiritual sizes.
I started a series called ‘Mountain Meditations’. It’s not very good, but it helps me unpack the portmanteau of my mind that can sometimes be bursting at the seams. It is almost a note to self meets my own thoughts – aspects that boil to the surface when I’m toiling on the slopes, abstaining and fasting. My mind sieves through the mundane superhumanly quickly in these moments, and I find the need to jot down much of what comes to me then.
This particular days message was ‘Mountains Make Men’. I have expanded on this in another blurb.
Always chasing the horizon.