Alone Together
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
January 16, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Do opposites attract?
For as long as I can remember, in just about every conversation concerning relationships, this question has been part of, if not often the primary focus, of the conversation. Surely opinions vary, but literature, movies, sitcoms, and various other forms of high and pop culture abound that seem to suggest that, while it’s not always easy, yes, opposites do attract.
Yet, many dating apps and services, including one that used to advertise heavily on TV and whose clients are living people not characters on a page or screen, tout the sophistication of their method for determining and pairing people who are compatible with one another. Compatible taken to mean those who share the same or similar interests, views, likes and dislikes. Which suggests a belief on a part of those service providers that opposites don’t attract, at least not in “real life”.
And I’m sure, most of us can provide enough anecdotal evidence from either our own relationships of those close to us to make a compelling case either way.
That sometimes the answer can be yes and sometimes no suggests there may be other factors at play that have nothing to do with how different or similar one’s interests, views, likes, and dislikes are to another person or group of people that shape the nature and quality of a relationship.
Indeed, were we to put the question, “Do opposites attract?” to Rainer Maria Rilke, I expect we’d get a response not unlike that in our second reading this morning from Rilke’s “Letters To A Young Poet”, in which he said, “All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes, whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling…”
Now, some might hear, “All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes” as a vote affirming opposites attract, but Rilke’s vote is not for opposites or similarities, at all. Instead, it is for a degree of mutual respect and interdependence that essentially flies in the face of long idealized notions of love and, more broadly, our relationships with multiple voluntary associations, be these people or organizations.
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people”, writes Rilke, “that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.” Odd as it may seem, in offering his advice on companionship he casts a vote for something that strikes the heart of many in this day and age with terror: time intentionally spent with and getting to know yourself; in a word: solitude.
But why solitude?
While listening to the podcast “On Being”, I once heard the environmental activist, author, and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy share a story about her relationship with he late husband in which she said, “About a year before we married, I’d been talking away, talking away as he was driving, and then he just looked at me and he said, “What a world you’ve got inside you.” And then I knew that it was my own world, and he could tell. He didn’t want to own it, he didn’t want it to be explained, but he was so glad it was there. All of that was in his voice. And that stayed with me throughout all those five-and-a-half decades — a world in myself. And being a stranger to each other, to some extent, we always affirmed that.”
How different what Macy is describing from the prevailing hope and expectation of our relationships with our partners, friends, not to mention with the institutions and organizations with which we associate. Relationships so many have been told and turn to to “complete” themselves by dissolution of two selves into one whole.
Such is a recipe for a kind of co-dependance, a clinical term that is not unlike a certain spiritual peril to which we human beings are susceptible. As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer cautioned, “Let they (him) who cannot be alone beware of community.” Bonhoeffer’s concern was that those who seek fellowship without solitude essentially risk losing themselves and become subject to forever reacting to the shifting affections and loyalties of those around them or the organizations and institutions to which they belong or associate.
We see this very thing playing out right now in the political sphere. Masses of people, on the right and left, each with their own world within, have so enmeshed their identity with their respective partisan communities, that all they do now is parrot a party line, as if that other world, their own world within has vanished. And should they stray, dissent, or rediscover that world within, they’re almost inevitably and viciously attacked by their own and/or banished from the group.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” These, the words of a man living way back in the 19th C., remind us the challenge we face is nothing new. Yet the shrinking of the globe that has occurred with advent of social media and instant communication does raise the stakes as it perpetually stokes a reactionary fire within us, too often confused in the absence of solitude, for the light of Life or, as some would say, the Divine. Indeed, without solitude others: people, organizations, causes, can become our identity, rather than someone or something with whom or which we identify.
Solitude then, it not just for the introvert, the person who needs time or space away from external stimulation to recharge, it is an essential, spiritual skill without which we imperil our very humanity. Indeed, Sherry Turkle, Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, reminds us, “If you don’t teach your children to be alone, they’ll only always know how to be lonely.” Turkle rightly differentiates between being alone and being lonely. In solitude we choose to be alone with ourselves, with loneliness we feel alone even in our own company.
And it is the fear of the latter that keeps many from pursuing the former. Paradoxically, as Turkle notes, it is by learning to be alone, by embracing solitude, that we mitigate our risk of loneliness. For solitude is about ultimately about connection. Connection to self, most assuredly, as the brief, but lovely poem by Li Bai, our first reading illustrates. Listen again to what it says,
It was at a wine party--
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.
Here, at the start we meet the poet in a state of drunkenness, alluding perhaps to the poet’s experience and awareness of our human tendency to overindulge in actions and relationships that confuse and inhibit self possession. A collection of flowers having blown and fallen into his lap communicate the passage of time as his hangover upon rising reminds us that solitude takes some adjustment, some practice, some getting used to. Yet like the birds having, “all gone to their nests”, the poet intuits a call home to self, and departs from his fellow inebriated friends. And so he leaves to walk along the river, alone in the moonlight. The poem’s last line, a metaphor for reconnecting to the flow of life within illuminated in the dark of night by the light of solitude.
Li Bai’s poem is a lovely image of the return to self that is the hallmark of solitude and as far from loneliness as one could get.
Still, no one should mistake this as a promoting solitude over community. For while Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community.” He equally warned, “Let him who is not in community beware of being alone,” adding, “The one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.”
As Bonhoeffer’s words reinforce, solitude is really about connection not isolation. It connects us to ourselves which in turn helps connect us to others without losing ourselves. Practiced in community, that is, with others, it strengthens our interdependence, keeping us from dissolving into utter dependance or slipping into the illusion of total independence. As Rilke put it, “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!”
Rilke’s words ring true for me as I reflect on the question with which we began, “Do opposites attract?” And although I hesitate to offer my own marriage as any sort of model, given it is as susceptible and/or experienced with any number of ailments common in long term relationships, it happens that this question of opposites has come up with some frequency over the last twenty-five years. Indeed, so many of my and my husband’s friends, observing us to be opposites in many ways, have asked how we make it work. Rather than try to argue we’re not as opposite as it sometimes appears or, conversely, to explain how our differences compliment one another, we long ago agreed to a common reply, “Three floors.”
Now, some hear this as a cynical response. Most get a bit of a laugh out of it. But behind it is, in the truest sense, a distillation of Rilke’s assertion and our ongoing commitment to, “love the distance between us.” That is, to honor each as his own self. And it is a gift that can only be imagined and given when we spend time in solitude. For ultimately solitude is how and where we learn and practice to be alone together… with ourselves, in the company of other individuals, and in community.
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
January 16, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Do opposites attract?
For as long as I can remember, in just about every conversation concerning relationships, this question has been part of, if not often the primary focus, of the conversation. Surely opinions vary, but literature, movies, sitcoms, and various other forms of high and pop culture abound that seem to suggest that, while it’s not always easy, yes, opposites do attract.
Yet, many dating apps and services, including one that used to advertise heavily on TV and whose clients are living people not characters on a page or screen, tout the sophistication of their method for determining and pairing people who are compatible with one another. Compatible taken to mean those who share the same or similar interests, views, likes and dislikes. Which suggests a belief on a part of those service providers that opposites don’t attract, at least not in “real life”.
And I’m sure, most of us can provide enough anecdotal evidence from either our own relationships of those close to us to make a compelling case either way.
That sometimes the answer can be yes and sometimes no suggests there may be other factors at play that have nothing to do with how different or similar one’s interests, views, likes, and dislikes are to another person or group of people that shape the nature and quality of a relationship.
Indeed, were we to put the question, “Do opposites attract?” to Rainer Maria Rilke, I expect we’d get a response not unlike that in our second reading this morning from Rilke’s “Letters To A Young Poet”, in which he said, “All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes, whereas everything that one is wont to call giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to come close to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling…”
Now, some might hear, “All companionship can consist only in the strengthening of two neighboring solitudes” as a vote affirming opposites attract, but Rilke’s vote is not for opposites or similarities, at all. Instead, it is for a degree of mutual respect and interdependence that essentially flies in the face of long idealized notions of love and, more broadly, our relationships with multiple voluntary associations, be these people or organizations.
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people”, writes Rilke, “that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.” Odd as it may seem, in offering his advice on companionship he casts a vote for something that strikes the heart of many in this day and age with terror: time intentionally spent with and getting to know yourself; in a word: solitude.
But why solitude?
While listening to the podcast “On Being”, I once heard the environmental activist, author, and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy share a story about her relationship with he late husband in which she said, “About a year before we married, I’d been talking away, talking away as he was driving, and then he just looked at me and he said, “What a world you’ve got inside you.” And then I knew that it was my own world, and he could tell. He didn’t want to own it, he didn’t want it to be explained, but he was so glad it was there. All of that was in his voice. And that stayed with me throughout all those five-and-a-half decades — a world in myself. And being a stranger to each other, to some extent, we always affirmed that.”
How different what Macy is describing from the prevailing hope and expectation of our relationships with our partners, friends, not to mention with the institutions and organizations with which we associate. Relationships so many have been told and turn to to “complete” themselves by dissolution of two selves into one whole.
Such is a recipe for a kind of co-dependance, a clinical term that is not unlike a certain spiritual peril to which we human beings are susceptible. As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer cautioned, “Let they (him) who cannot be alone beware of community.” Bonhoeffer’s concern was that those who seek fellowship without solitude essentially risk losing themselves and become subject to forever reacting to the shifting affections and loyalties of those around them or the organizations and institutions to which they belong or associate.
We see this very thing playing out right now in the political sphere. Masses of people, on the right and left, each with their own world within, have so enmeshed their identity with their respective partisan communities, that all they do now is parrot a party line, as if that other world, their own world within has vanished. And should they stray, dissent, or rediscover that world within, they’re almost inevitably and viciously attacked by their own and/or banished from the group.
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” These, the words of a man living way back in the 19th C., remind us the challenge we face is nothing new. Yet the shrinking of the globe that has occurred with advent of social media and instant communication does raise the stakes as it perpetually stokes a reactionary fire within us, too often confused in the absence of solitude, for the light of Life or, as some would say, the Divine. Indeed, without solitude others: people, organizations, causes, can become our identity, rather than someone or something with whom or which we identify.
Solitude then, it not just for the introvert, the person who needs time or space away from external stimulation to recharge, it is an essential, spiritual skill without which we imperil our very humanity. Indeed, Sherry Turkle, Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, reminds us, “If you don’t teach your children to be alone, they’ll only always know how to be lonely.” Turkle rightly differentiates between being alone and being lonely. In solitude we choose to be alone with ourselves, with loneliness we feel alone even in our own company.
And it is the fear of the latter that keeps many from pursuing the former. Paradoxically, as Turkle notes, it is by learning to be alone, by embracing solitude, that we mitigate our risk of loneliness. For solitude is about ultimately about connection. Connection to self, most assuredly, as the brief, but lovely poem by Li Bai, our first reading illustrates. Listen again to what it says,
It was at a wine party--
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.
Here, at the start we meet the poet in a state of drunkenness, alluding perhaps to the poet’s experience and awareness of our human tendency to overindulge in actions and relationships that confuse and inhibit self possession. A collection of flowers having blown and fallen into his lap communicate the passage of time as his hangover upon rising reminds us that solitude takes some adjustment, some practice, some getting used to. Yet like the birds having, “all gone to their nests”, the poet intuits a call home to self, and departs from his fellow inebriated friends. And so he leaves to walk along the river, alone in the moonlight. The poem’s last line, a metaphor for reconnecting to the flow of life within illuminated in the dark of night by the light of solitude.
Li Bai’s poem is a lovely image of the return to self that is the hallmark of solitude and as far from loneliness as one could get.
Still, no one should mistake this as a promoting solitude over community. For while Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community.” He equally warned, “Let him who is not in community beware of being alone,” adding, “The one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.”
As Bonhoeffer’s words reinforce, solitude is really about connection not isolation. It connects us to ourselves which in turn helps connect us to others without losing ourselves. Practiced in community, that is, with others, it strengthens our interdependence, keeping us from dissolving into utter dependance or slipping into the illusion of total independence. As Rilke put it, “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky!”
Rilke’s words ring true for me as I reflect on the question with which we began, “Do opposites attract?” And although I hesitate to offer my own marriage as any sort of model, given it is as susceptible and/or experienced with any number of ailments common in long term relationships, it happens that this question of opposites has come up with some frequency over the last twenty-five years. Indeed, so many of my and my husband’s friends, observing us to be opposites in many ways, have asked how we make it work. Rather than try to argue we’re not as opposite as it sometimes appears or, conversely, to explain how our differences compliment one another, we long ago agreed to a common reply, “Three floors.”
Now, some hear this as a cynical response. Most get a bit of a laugh out of it. But behind it is, in the truest sense, a distillation of Rilke’s assertion and our ongoing commitment to, “love the distance between us.” That is, to honor each as his own self. And it is a gift that can only be imagined and given when we spend time in solitude. For ultimately solitude is how and where we learn and practice to be alone together… with ourselves, in the company of other individuals, and in community.
Amen and Blessed Be