Solitude and Love

I'm still thinking very much about solitude, aloneness, loneliness.

In that order.

I feel solitary in the best way.

I feel alone in a definite way.

I only feel lonely in the most distant way.

I want to embrace Rilke's definition of solitude, "a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.... a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person" (Letters, 69).

I don't know who this other person is.

I don't need to know.

Because all I want to do is work on myself.

I just want to become capable of loving.

I feel much love.

For others.

For myself.

But I don't know if I will ever find another solitude, let alone one that will "protect and border and greet" me.

I don't think that should concern me.

Frankly, it does and it doesn't.