Today the battle rages between external and internal forces. The difficulty is keeping them separate. They overlap and mingle so as to upset the balance. My very precarious mental balance that is. Why is balance necessary? Simply because it minimizes stress and we all know stress kills. Most all of societies ills, maladies, ailments, dysfunction, are totally or partially attributed to stress. Stress rears its ugliness in myriad and varied ways. Everything we think or do has an element of stress. But if we can limit the stress by separating the external, jobs, finance, wars, politics, traffic, with the internal, anxiety, regret, self esteem, fear, well just maybe the battle isn't a total loss.
Solitude can play an important role and something I've decided to utilize more and more. It's easier to control the environment when you are alone and quiet. You needn't allow the external stress to invade your privacy, your solitude. Then the internal stress of your own making can be dealt with calmly and peacefully. Separate and balance. I found as I get older I need less and less. I've also found when out and about interacting socially the external stress, even the happy stress of family gatherings, manifests itself physically. Nerve endings react, pimples/bumps, toothaches, rashes/hives, muscle and joint aches, and occur for no apparent reason. Stress.
You see if I want my quality of life, which is certainly limited as I approach 74 years old, to be joyful, then I must adjust to these new realities. I know it's difficult for friends and family, who only know the persona I've cultivated over a lifetime, to wonder what's the matter. I can't go around trying to explain that I'm adapting to the mental and physical person I've become. Although I do and those explanations seem futile and or inadequate, which is more stress. So you see I'm leaning more and more toward solitude however much the external forces tug at me to get out there.
I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto "to live well you must live unseen." Rene Descartes
The human race exaggerates everything: its heroes, its enemies, its importance. Charles Bukowski
Blessed be he who has found his solitude, not the solitude pictured in painting or poetry, but his own, unique, predestined solitude. Blessed be he who knows how to suffer! To him comes destiny, from him comes authentic action. Hermann Hesse
A few quotes from mental friends, I hope you don't mind.
