SOLITUDE AND SECLUSION

[Guest guest]

SOLITUDE AND SECLUSION

 

Life is an island in an ocean o solitude and

seclusion.

 

Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees

its dreams,

and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the

middle of an

ocean of solitude and seclusion.

 

Your life, my friend, is an island separated from

another

islands and continents. Regardless of how many

boats you

send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon

your

shores, you yourself are an island separated b its

own

pains, secluded in its happiness and far away in

its

compassion and hidden in its secrets and

myseteries.

 

I saw you my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold,

happy

in your wealth and great in your riches and

believing that a

handful of gold is he secret chain that links the

thoughts of

the people with your own thoughts and links their

feeling

with your own.

 

I saw you as a great conqueror leading a

conquering army

toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing

it.

 

On second glance I found beyond the wall of your

treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and

seclusion and

jewels, but without water.

 

I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of

glory,

surrounded by people extolling your charity,,

enumerating

your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the

presence

of a prophet lifting their souls up into the

planets and stars.

I saw you looking at then, conentment and strength

upon

your face, as if you were to then as the soul is

to the

body.

 

On the second look I saw your secluded self

standing

beside your throne, suffering in its seclusion and

quaking

in its loneliness. I saw that self stretching its

hand as if

begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above

the

shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of

everything except its solitude and seclusion.

 

I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a

beautiful

woman, filling her palms with a beautiful woman,

filling her

palms with your kisses as she looked at you with

sympathy and affection in her eyes and the

sweetness of

motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that

love has

erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and

he is

now within the eternal soul which draws toward

itself,

with love, those who were separated by solitude

and

seclusion.

 

On the second look I saw behind your soul another

lonely

soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop

of tears in

the palm of that woman.

 

Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from

any

other residence and neighbors.

 

Your inner soul is a home far away from other

homes

named after you. If this residence is dard, you

cannot light

it with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty you

cannot fill it

with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the

middle of a

desert, you could not move it to a garden planted

by

someone else.

 

Your inner soul, my friend is surrounded the

solitude and

seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this

seclusion

you should not be you and I would not be I. If it

were not

for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I

heard your

voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw

your face,

I would imaging that I were looking into a mirror.

 

From " A Third Treasury " by Khalil

Gibran