溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Can I Bear My Own Company?
When alone, can I be a good friend to myself?
Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can.
Seneca urged his friend Lucilius to withdraw from the crowd and enter into himself. But he added a condition — be alone only once you have become a better person, for it is dangerous to be alone with one not yet mastered. For him, solitude was not escape but training to become a good friend to oneself. The question branched. Aristotle called humans "political animals" by nature, incomplete alone; Montaigne, by contrast, praised the room of solitude — "keep a back room wholly your own." Pascal went further: all human misery comes from being unable to sit quietly alone in a room.
In an age when silence sends us straight to a screen, the power to be alone with oneself grows rarer and dearer.
Time alone often makes me uneasy.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Time alone often makes me uneasy. When silence rolls in, I hurry to switch on a screen or reach out to someone. Seneca suggests that discomfort may be a sign I have not yet become a friend to myself. I labor so hard to learn to get along with others, yet have never learned to get along with myself. Today I will set the screen down for a while and stay alone with myself without fleeing. In that silence, I mean to find out at last what kind of friend I am to myself.
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