Going Home

Summer is coming, and my semester is almost done. I only have a month left before I fly back home to BC. It’s kind of a strange feeling, like it always is whenever I head back home. A part – a big part – of me wants to stay and experience Ottawa in the summer, to stay with the friends I have made, to check out some of the music festivals, and maybe explore more of eastern Canada, but the other part of me feels relieved. When I get home, and go outside, the only thing I will hear will be the river in the valley below, the birds calling from the brush, and the wind pouring through the trees. When a vehicle passes by it will be a rare and noteworthy thing.

I have a job lined up for the summer back in Smithers. I will be working in a park, cleaning bathrooms, painting outhouses, and raking campsites. I have to say I’m looking forward to it. I will be outside, working mostly on my own. When I am at the park early in the morning, walking along the lakeshore, and the loons start calling, it will be the sweetest thing.

Ottawa is a beautiful city, and this is only a short goodbye, really. I will be back in the fall again, and I know I will miss this place while I’m gone, but sometimes it was difficult to find spaces for myself. Sometimes, in all the business and noise, it was difficult to be alone, and I wonder about all the people who live in cities – how do you find solitude?

It is a difficult thing to be alone these days. I don’t mean just logistically, and I don’t mean just for me.We have so many ways now, of never being alone, so many social media websites, cellphones, texting, Skype. So many convenient ways of reaching each other, so many social groups to join: yoga and church, martial arts, jogging groups, clubs – you don’t ever have to be alone. We used to have no choice but to be alone. Our neighbors were miles away and the road was often barred by impenetrable brush. I wonder if this fear of such absolute solitude is one that haunts our memories, for it seems to me that everything in our society today is built in such a way as to make sure we are never, any one of us, ever alone. Solitude is perhaps an ancient art that we are losing to time.

The solitude of our past is such a distant thing.

I don’t want to be a doomsayer, pointing out one more way our society is sliding down the road to hell, but I want to say this: it’s okay to be alone.

It’s okay to go into your room and shut the door for an hour.

It’s okay to sit alone on the floor and do nothing but stare at the wall.

It’s okay leave all the world behind and just breathe your own breath.

It’s okay to find companionship with just yourself.

There is no need for meditation, or yoga, unless you feel you need it. There is no need for anything but your willingness to just be with yourself.

It’s okay.

It’s okay to be alone.

Take a listen to poet Tanya Davis on the art of solitude:

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