The Power of Alone

Fishing Dock, Leesylvania Park

Alone. A place. A time. An emotion. A goal. A horror. A plea. What a word! Was it Greta Garbo who said, “I want to be alone.”? More than a mere adjective or adverb, alone is a sliding definition, it changes, it morphs as we adjust to life around us.

I think when Garbo pled to be left alone she was begging to be relieved of the emotional stress and weight of the relationships around her. Perhaps her line was so effective because of her own deep unhappiness. She felt isolated and alone in America; she was not acting, she was immersed, no submerged, in “alone.” She later became a recluse and reached the goal she’d cried out for in the movie.

Alone isn’t always a bad thing. Some of us find creative energy in solitude; without distractions new thoughts and ideas emerge from the murky depths and find themselves on paper or screen. Alone can be healthy, a break from stress and pressure and the constant, intense pace of life. Alone isn’t an objective state…it can’t be measured by the number of people around you or the number of things you do.

Loneliness, that’s the noun cousin of the adjective alone. Same family, but very different. Loneliness implies a feeling of solitude and sadness. I certainly empathize with loneliness, I remember days in Iceland when no matter where I went, no one was there. I can still smell the loneliness of the beach winds in Florida. The loneliness standing next to gravesites. I think Garbo suffered from loneliness more than she suffered from being alone.

I smile as I think of alone rising up out of loneliness, an oxymoronic thought, but alone can be a powerful tool for creativity and confidence and strength. Many of the images that I find and post are of “alone,” like the one above taken at Leesylvania Park on the Potomac River. They are not about loneliness, they are about the joy and power and creativity of alone.