A few days ago I got a phone call from an editor of a prestigious magazine. “Hey Alma, I’ve got a new assignment for you: An article on Michel Montaigne. A thousand words.”
“You mean Montaigne the Renaissance philosopher? What do I know about philosophy?”
“A true journalist can write about anything. I’ll give you three weeks to finish it. We are running a special July issue on solitude in modern life. What do you say?”
I hesitated. Did Montaigne write anything inspiring on solitude? I am unable to write on a topic that doesn’t move me personally.
But the thought of publishing an article in such an important magazine attracted me. “Alright, I’ll give it a try.”
It turned out that Montaigne wrote one book-chapter about solitude, among the many other topics he covered. A few hours of internet search and a visit to the library gave me the general background about his life and thought.
I printed out Montaigne’s chapter on solitude from the Internet, sat down and read it slowly several times. I was waiting for a spark of inspiration, but nothing happened.
Then I noticed the sentence:
“There is nothing more unsociable than man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature.”
An old family story surfaced in mind…
My niece Christine was a cute little girl in her childhood, and her mother – my sister – adored her. Her father, a passionate scientist, loved her too of course, but he spent most of his time at work. My sister felt lonely, and an intense intimate relationship developed between mother and daughter.
Unfortunately, all this changed abruptly when the father was killed in a car accident, and soon afterwards her mother remarried. A new love-story flourished for the mother, and it took away much of her attention from the daughter to the new husband. Gone were the intimate mother-daughter years. The new stepfather was not uncaring, but he remained a stranger to Christine and an intruder in her idyllic world.
Christine, now a teenager, felt abandoned and hurt. At home she would close herself in her room, and would be seen only at the dinner table, where she would sulk silently or make nasty remarks. The vacuum her mother had left in her heart remained for years.
In my occasional visits during those years I was alarmed to see Christine’s attitude becoming resentful towards everybody around her, erratic, and sometimes explosive. She was suspended several times from high school, once for attacking a teacher who – so she claimed – had consistently ignored her in class, and once for beating up another girl who presumably joked at her expense. The poor girl later swore that she was only trying to befriend her.
“Not everybody is against you,” the school psychologist kept telling her in the counseling sessions she was forced to take. “Give people a chance to like you.”
But Christine did not believe him. At the age of seventeen she already knew that every single person would sooner or later betray her trust.
After her graduation things seemed to be getting better when she met John. He was in love with her, they spent much time together, and for a while she felt that he could fill the vacuum in her heart. They married.
For a year or two everything went well, until her young husband found a promising career, and started spending much of his time at work. Again Christine found herself alone, and the familiar sense of being abandoned returned. Arguments and nasty fights erupted between Christine and John, and her frustration turned into aggression towards everybody around.
Sitting now with Montaigne’s chapter on my knees, I remembered vividly these awful times. She was tortured by old wounds, and it was terrible for me to see her. I recalled trying to comfort her, but nothing I said could relieve her suffering. Helplessly I watched her succumbing to the old pain dragging her down.
As Montaigne writes: “We do not get rid of the main torments of life… Ambition, greed, indecision, fear and desires do not leave us just because we have exchanged our landscape.”
Whenever alone without her husband, Christine was lost. Her cheeks grew sunken and her eyes ran wild. I was worried that she would lose her mind. Her husband too felt helpless. Naturally, he could not be with her all the time. Day by day the old sense of abandonment was eating her from inside. Finally something broke inside her.
“I have had enough of people,” she whispered to me one night. “I am going to find solitude. Me alone. Just me, nobody else.”
The next day she packed up a few things and left home. For a while I heard fragmentary news from her. She found herself in a tiny village on a remote mountain. She joined a group of solitaries. She became a cleaning woman in a contemplative community. Then she disappeared completely.
I thought about her often. I hoped she found healing in her solitude.
Years later I tried to trace her, and somehow found her name through social media. She was now a hired cook in a monastery. At first she refused to see me, but I managed to convince her to meet just for coffee.
After a day of driving, I was delighted to hug her. “It’s lovely to see you, Christine! Solitude did you good!”
But immediately I saw on her face the old resentment.
“At least one person remembers me,” she said sarcastically, “after forgetting me for five years.”
She remained cold and remote throughout our short conversation. I could barely hold back my tears. At last I gave her a one-sided hug and left.
I never learned what had happened to her during those years of solitude, but it was clear that she was still as angry and hurt as ever. Evidently she was carrying the sense of abandonment with her wherever she went.
I lowered my eyes to Montaigne’s pages and read out loud:
“Ambition, greed, indecision, fear, and desires do not leave us just because we have exchanged our landscape… They often follow us even to monasteries and philosophy schools. Neither deserts, nor caves, nor hair-shirts, nor fasting, can disengage us from them.”
I picked up my cellphone and texted the editor: “The article on Montaigne is on the way. Hope to send it to you this weekend.”
Then I continue reading Montaigne’s words:
“If you do not first free both yourself and your mind from the weight of your burdens, moving will only increase the pressure on you… That is why it is not enough to get away from the public, and not enough to go to another place.
(“I have broken my chain,” you say. But a dog may break its chain and still carry a long part of it connected to its neck – Persius)
We carry our chains with us. Our freedom is not total. We still look at the things we have left behind. Our imagination is still full of them.”
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To read the fuller text by Michel de Montaigne, see the Agora website at: