Currently Watching If Only By Jennifer Love Hewitt, Paul Nicholls, Tom Wilkinson, Diana Hardcastle, Lucy Davenport see related

What is it about humanity that makes us seek refuge in complication?  Comfort in things not straight-forward?  Strength through solving puzzles to which the answers are not revealed without effort?  Excitement in never standing still--always another challenge left to unravel, always something else requiring our efforts, worry, time, focus?

And yet, in the end, we still wonder why our lives remain unsatisfied.

By very definition, solitude derives not from complication, confusion, constant movement or change.  Nor does safety.  But these things are necessary in moderation, the impractical parts of an irrational world, and many, myself included, tend to crave them.  Even with as much as we scoff in the name of social, mental or emotional entanglements...we still find ourselves tossed right in the middle of them all.  It is as if they gravitate in our direction, and perhaps they do.  And so long as there is something visibly or imaginably imperfect in the world around us, there appears to be no need to address what is within, to not only point out what needs improvement, but to embrace that which is going right with the world.

Then, one day, when the shadows fade--when the clouds dissipate from all that was the bane of prior existence as we knew it--we realize.  Realize how much devotion was directed to nursing the world back to health (whether our own or another's).  Realize that no matter how much energy we expend, some part of the world (whether our own or another's) will still be hurting.  Realize that we are not superheroes as individuals without support.  And that negatives cannot only fog our perceptions of the truth, but can eat away at the perceptions of positives, too.  That the empty space left behind was either crafted, a product of our imaginary diggings, or easily filled again by light, hope, and the sorts of love that don't go away.  That, when we are filled up once more, we'll only dive back into the struggle, working to save, but knowing that the same and more lessons will be learned again.  And that, sometimes, we ourselves are in need of being saved (from the struggle or from ourselves).

This "world"--this "view"--I describe is certainly not that of the population in its entirety.  Surely, that would be a most ridiculous assertion.  But it is (at least part of) the world for those whom declare in their battle cry empathy, truth, idealism, change, growth...even cynicism, manipulation, stubbornness, conservation.  A world inhabited by myself, and, perhaps, more than we are even willing to believe.

It's a cycle in which I live each and every day.  A cycle I constantly work to break but know is well-engraved into my operations, my perceptions, my strategies.  And perhaps, while some cycles are meant to be broken, there is something to be said of this way in which we either aim to rescue or stay as far away from the dramas of our world, yet embrace them on the screen, in our dreams, in our hearts.  It's connection--whether it's "real" or "crafted" (even if there is a difference)--and it's something I call my curse and my blessing all the same.

But one thing I know for sure--every time I wake up to resolution, it teaches me what I've valued, what I've allowed to dissolve, and makes me ponder about what I shall do next.  If it's not one thing that must be fixed, then another?  Perhaps, if not certainly, at least in my world.  Yet I argue that the reasons go much deeper that self-formed mind puzzles to walls and worries from past trends around us...that once I know all will be well, I do truly know it.  And I embrace it entirely, letting nothing touch it as if immortalized.

While I can't say I'd ever take the easy road, I know the complicated one makes simplicity all the sweeter.  And perhaps that is enough.  Perhaps it's enough that I'm walking it.  Solitude without direction merely leads to stagnancy, after all.