May Sarton on the Cure for Despair and Why Solitude Is the Seedbed of Self-Discovery

The French philosopher and Christian mystic Simone Weil wrote that to understand affliction one must accept our total human vulnerability. “I may lose at any moment,” she wrote, “through the play of circumstance over which I have no control, anything whatsoever I possess, including those things which are so intimately mine that I consider them as b

in her nocturnal and suicidal hours, that solitude was the problem. But that was because it hadn’t been true solitude. The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different char

It’s impossible to experience solitude regularly for any extended length of time without personal passions and authentic longings surging to the surface of your awareness.

A day of deep despair can be followed by a day of hope, and just when you think you are at your worst you can turn the corner to recovery. Your emotions are so variable in breakdown, try not to be too impressed by your unhappy moods, and never be completely discouraged.

“No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you,” wrote Carl Jung.

The goal is self-knowledge, self-reliance, self-love, self-trust, and improved intimacy with others. It is often hard-won. And it often takes many years to feel that any shift has occurred.