I am currently bracing for a season of solitude, putting structures in place for minimal physical interactions with the outer world, keeping documents and important paraphernalia in easily accessible locations, making sure I can easily access emergency contact while figuring out guardianship for Milo, my doggie roommate.

In this space, I have also been exploring, as practice, deeper levels of what it means to be free within. In the confines of my own home, projecting the safety within to the chaos that I am seeing without. I am opening up to the experience of grief, heartbreak, at the same time the truest experience of what it is to open up my heart fully…despite!

Beyond the logistics of the things happening under the surface, there is a deeper preparation happening for me. In this dense, liminal space, I have been practicing what it is to be free using the confines of my own home. I am attempting to project the safety I cultivate inside to the walls of this house, to the chaos I perceive without. This paradox forces me to reflect on the people and systems that surround us. I find myself holding tight to the inspiration found in the life of Anne Frank. Confined to an attic, stripped of agency, she famously chose to believe in the inherent goodness of humanity. From her, I am learning the critical distinction between systems of oppression and the people trapped within them. And it is so so easy to conflate the two. It is easy to look at those who ride on the wings of broken systems and see them only as enemies. I am learning that we can choose to love the person while still giving reverence to the terrifying power of the systems that shape their movement and behavior. We can acknowledge the machinery without dehumanizing the cog.

This brings me to the ultimate question of agency: What is in my control, and what is not?

Is loving those who hurt us, who persecute us, actually possible? Is there a pathway to it that isn’t just …spiritual bypassing? Surely, it must be possible. If Viktor Frankl could find meaning in the ashes of Auschwitz, if Nelson Mandela could emerge from twenty-seven freaking years of imprisonment with a vision for reconciliation rather than revenge, then the capacity exists somewhere within the human spirit. It is difficult— excruciatingly so. But I know it’s possible.

For me, this is where "practice" falls. How can I look at a person who has truly hurt me and choose to see them as an extension of myself and not a villain? How do I move beyond the performative dance of forgiveness while arriving at a place of true recognition?

And what lies beyond my control? Clearly, changing entire systems of oppression single-handedly is out of reach. But perhaps there is a different way to view these behemoths. Can we look at these so-called broken systems and see them as indicators of a deep, starving hunger rather than monsters? Can we see the violence and the oppression as a desperate, twisted cry for attention that the brokenness is calling for? When I ask these questions, I feel a physical shift. If I can let my chest area melt, if I can allow my heart to actually open, the contracted polarities of good vs. evil, us vs. them, they seem to drop away. In that space, I am left only with the raw, difficult, and yet beautiful work of being human.

Navigate this season with ancestors

To navigate this season of solitude and inner expansion, I look more closely at the “ancestors of isolation”, those who turned confinement into a cathedral of the spirit. I think of Anne Frank: The Separation of Soul and System. Anne Frank’s brilliance wasn’t just her optimism it was her ability to maintain an identity separate from her circumstances. As I referenced, when we mistake the system for the person, we lose our ability to empathize. What I learned in her story is that people often act out of fear and conditioning. The system provides the script, meanwhile the person reading it is often just as lost as the victim. By seeing the “good” in people, Anne wasn’t denying their capacity for evil; she was acknowledging that their core self was being suppressed by a poisonous ideology. I think of Etty Hillesum, the Guardian of the Well …while Anne Frank is often remembered for her optimism, Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman in Amsterdam who eventually perished in Auschwitz, offers a fierce, mystical pragmatism. In the face of impending doom, she refused to let her heart turn into a stone of hatred. She famously wrote, “Every atom of hatred we add to the world makes it still more inhospitable.”

“Such words as ‘God’ and ‘death’, and ‘suffering’ and ‘eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the falling rain. We must just be”

Etty reversed the traditional flow of prayer. Instead of asking God to save her, she promised to save God. She wrote: “You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last.” My gosh! That always moves me! I have loads and loads of quotes from her life. In fact here are some:

* “Such words as ‘God’ and ‘death’, and ‘suffering’ and ‘eternity’ are best forgotten. We have to become as simple and as wordless as the growing corn or the failling rain. We must just be”

* “The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us”

* “There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God”

* “The more peace there is within us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world”

* “We could fight war and all its excrescences by releasing each day, the love which is shackled inside us, and giving it a change to live”

* “Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that’s not too awful either, but never, never give up”

* “I no longer believe that we can change antyhing in the world until we first change ourselves”

* “Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.”

In reflecting on her very short life(she was killed at 28 years) and as I figure out guardianship for Milo, I think of myself as the guardian of that “piece of God” inside. My choice to withdraw is an exciting stage for retreat for me, a sentry duty to protect the inner softness from the hardening effects of the world.

I think of Nelson Mandela and The Long Game of Reconciliation. Mandela’s confinement was physical, but his mind roamed free. He realized that hating his jailers would only keep him a prisoner of his own bitterness. He cultivated a “freedom within” that eventually manifested as freedom for his nation. I am learning that my internal state is the one territory that cannot be occupied unless I surrender it. Mandela used his time to learn the language and history of his oppressors to understand how to dismantle the fear that drove them.

I think of Viktor Frankl. Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, coined the concept that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. I am learning that meaning is not found in the environment; it is forged in spite of it. If you can find purpose in your suffering, even if that purpose is just to remain soft in a hard world—you transcend the suffering.

Practical notes for Solitude

* Somatic Release: When you feel the contraction of anxiety or anger, physically touch your heart. Breathe into the tightness. The body holds the score of the outer chaos; you must manually reset it.

* Mental Exercise: When I feel anger toward an oppressor, I visualize them as a child before the system got its claws into them. I address the human beneath the uniform or the ideology.

* The “Other Self” Meditation: When thinking of those who hurt me, I try the practice of saying, “Just like me, they wish to be happy. Just like me, they are trying to avoid suffering.” It neutralizes the demonization process.

* Routine as Ritual: Order in my immediate environment creates a psychological buffer against the disorder outside. The in and out effect also applies see The Mirror And The Dance.

* Document the Light: Just as Anne Frank kept a diary, documenting her internal shifts. I have a practice of doing just this, noticing moments where I drop the “polarities.” Somehow, these serve as a tool and roadmap when the darkness feels absolute.

* Useful Information: Just like Mandela, solitude can be used to study the ‘perceived enemy’. Understanding the roots of the chaos outside, knowledge dissolves fear that the hatred feeds upon.

* Holding the question: When grief takes a hold of me, when I feel overwhelmed, I ask, “What is this moment asking of me?” I don’t bother going through the rabbit hole of asking “Why is this happening?”. The focal point holds the question, “How can I respond to this with integrity?”

In a lot of ways, I see that when we shine a light on the human spirit, we are doing the most revolutionary work possible: we are refusing to let the chaos outside dictate the climate inside.

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