The gift of solitude

I notice that in spite of spending time with friends and family on a regular basis, there seems to be an element of loneliness this year that I haven't felt in a while. Upon brief reflection, I attribute this to two things. First, the quality of interaction with friends--even close, long-term friends--has been more superficial, perhaps owing to the busyness of our lives and the rarity of spending time together. And secondly, I wonder if a lack of personal time of solitude has any bearing on this.

After napping after work today (being post-call), I enjoyed a thirty-minute run and showered, caught up on e-mail and friends' blogs. Noticing the fleeting sunlight outside my courtyard window, though, I was inspired to seek intentional alone time. Heating up a cup of chai, I wandered up to the top of the parking garage adjacent to the apartment complex.

From that vantage point, the view was a little less than stunning, but it does afford a wonderful, quiet place to relax. Looking south, I could see red rooftop after rooftop and the shimmering lights of downtown rising in the dusky sky. To the north and west was the busy interstate with automobile lights crawling toward their home for the evening, as well as the sprawling campus of my medical school. Nearby luxury high-rises glowed with incandescent warmth in story after story of windows.

But best of all, the bowl of the sky offered a broad palette of color: a deep blue with a few faint stars in the east, and a sober orange to the west where the sun had disappeared some time ago. Under this canopy I sipped my chai, enjoyed the cool evening breeze, and prayed, listening occasionally to the distant sounds of an occasional car several stories below, or the fading roar of a plane in the distance. And for these thirty minutes of solitude, I enjoyed a simply being alive.