the hermit
what the gloomy dude with the lantern can teach us about graceful solitude
It’s a Wednesday, and it sure feels like it. The clock is perpetually slow, the tasks are piling up, and the weekend seems like a faraway refuge. Texts, emails, pings, beeps announce yet another fun possibility. Free live music? A birthday party? BBQ at the beach? Every day churns out tasks and checked lists, and every evening packed with frivolity. The calendar is so damn packed, there’s not a single bar of white.
Enough, says the Hermit. It’s time to stop.
But what about the fun? What about my friends? Aren’t I supposed to be producing? Aren’t I supposed to be making an appearance every week? If I don’t go, what am I supposed to be doing?
Nothing, says the Hermit. Try to do…nothing.
In the age of overload and instant gratification, ‘doing nothing’ feels impossible. Even an evening home can turn into “the everything shower”, the heavily worshipped checklist universal to performative girlhood. Is this for my mental health or am I just trying to seem productive?
Stop, says the Hermit. And simply be.
The Hermit knows how to simply be. He has on a comfy cloak, and he’s looking at his lantern. Watching the flames. When was the last time you just watched the flames in a fireplace, in a fire pit? Looked out at the ocean waves, sat with your mind? No expectations of how to pass the time, or will some answers into existence. I prefer to sit on the green grass in my yard, and let my chickens roam around me. Sometimes I watch them. Sometimes I lay back and look up at the blue sky. And after a while, some enlightening thoughts roll through.
Perhaps some trivial things have carried too much weight. Perhaps I’ve been too harsh on myself. Perhaps I simple have no thoughts, just notice the breeze, the clucks from the hens, the dull itchiness of grass blades against my skin. That space of solitude — maybe just 20 minutes, maybe several hours — passes in a haze, but pleasantly. That spinning sensation of lurching towards some kind of manic future dissipates.
So perhaps he’s not such a gloomy dude after all. He’s not the wisest, not the brightest, not the most capable. But he knows a thing or two about how to live. Solitude doesn’t always promise peace, but it brings grace. Relief colored compassion.
I’ll take it.