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Alone, Together
I have a super cute Golden Doodle named Coby. Like most members of his breed, he does a limited number of things in a rompily mischievous but adorable way. Sometimes I stare at him and try to scrutinize what could be going through his furry little mind. He seems to like me; he certainly loves to eat, and when he is deprived of attention for too long, he begins to whimper like he’s very sad. Nonetheless, I think Coby’s consciousness is, in the end, inscrutable. I can’t know what he is “thinking” and feeling, or what these feelings mean to him. He’s in his world and I’m in mine. We are alone, together.
This fundamental disconnect is present in human relationships as well. Like Coby, the people I love seem close yet unknowable, their inner worlds just out of reach. There’s an area of cognitive science called Affective Science that deals with the association between physical responses (like wincing or laughing) and their presumed underlying mental states. But how reliable is this association? How many smiles seem perfectly genuine but are actually practiced deceit? Ultimately, we’re all just guessing at the inner worlds of others. It’s tempting to associate the gleam in your partner’s eye with an emotion you experience that you assume to be similar. Is this what they call love? If so, why do lovers generally seem so unsure about it? Consider a few examples in popular song:
What is this thing called love?
Is this love that I’m feeling?
Is this really love or just a game?
The bottom line is that we have no idea what any other person is experiencing. We are simply making assumptions based on some physiological clues that may or may not be correct. Naturally, we crave confirmation, and it can be maddening when we just can’t get it. Obviously, you can feel very close to people, but on the final level, you are on your own. Since we can't truly know what others experience (including teachers), how can we trust that their paths will work for our fundamentally unknowable inner worlds? This fundamental solitude, whether with pets or people, isn’t just philosophical; it points to a deeper truth: we must ultimately forge our own paths to find meaning.
The Liberation of Abandonment
A number of years ago, I participated in an online learning forum. It was pretty rigorous, and truth be told, I was having trouble keeping up. I cycled through a bunch of emotional states and landed somewhere near toxic despair. Seeing this, my wife suggested that I abandon the program and instead create my own. Her simple words struck me as profound and deeply liberating. “Yes, this path is not for me! I have no choice but to forge my own—one that is exclusive to who I am and what I need.” Many of us have felt trapped in a path that doesn’t fit, only to realize later we can, indeed, must choose our own.
This realization—that only I could know my true path—echoes ancient spiritual teachings that celebrate solitary journeys. And this is the rub: in order to satisfy the existential itch we all feel (or so I assume you do), we can be advised, guided, prodded, exhorted, or begged to go in a particular direction. That direction may or may not be helpful; only we can know if it truly is.
Ancient Paths of Solitude
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Most wisdom traditions acknowledge a stage of ultimate independence and solitude. The Mishna, for instance, discusses the limitations on teaching esoteric knowledge; a teacher can only hint at or allude to the ideas indirectly once the student has reached a level of independent understanding.
The Taoist path to becoming one with the Tao emphasizes individual cultivation through practices like meditation. While masters may offer teachings, the final alignment with the Tao is a personal, unguided merging with the natural flow. Like the Taoist emphasis on individual cultivation, my wife’s advice to forge my own path felt like a call to align with my own natural flow.
In Advaita Vedanta, the realization of Moksha (liberation) or Self-realization is an individual recognition of one’s unity with Brahman. While gurus provide guidance, the final understanding (jnana) is an internal, solitary process.
Sailing Toward the Ineffable
As a sixth grader, I was captivated by C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I recently revisited The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Reepicheep (a brave talking mouse) leaves his shipmates and sets sail alone in a tiny coracle toward Aslan’s Country—in search of the ineffable. His journey struck me as a perfect mirror to my own moment of clarity when I abandoned a path that wasn’t mine. Reepicheep’s solitary quest, driven by a longing for something greater, embodies the courage it takes to go your own way.
Like him, we may never fully know what lies ahead—whether it’s the inner world of a loved one or the meaning of our own existence—but the act of choosing our path, alone yet resolute, is what sets us free. In the end, perhaps our deepest connections come not from knowing others completely, but from the shared courage to remain authentically ourselves—alone, together, each on our own necessary journey.