My dear friend,
Solitude bears the weight of death itself – to be forgotten by others.
Years ago, in my naivety, I spoke without understanding, yet even then, I wrote, “When there’s no one left to remember you, you cease to be who you were…” I had not yet seen that without someone to behold and remember you, you exist neither in the past nor the present.
Have you heard the tale of Ibn Arabi’s hidden treasure? Where the Divine confesses, “I was a hidden treasure longing to be known, hence I created man…” A treasure that does not seek to be seen, but seeks the gaze of a human eye – an eye often cynical and forgetful.
Dear friend, we humans may perish in loneliness, but such an end is not unwelcome. Amidst the many anxieties, the dread of these dark nights, in the pitch-black tunnels whose ends remain unseen.
Once, in the heart of the Alps in Switzerland, we boarded a train by car. I had never entered a train with a car and did not know what awaited. The train plunged into darkness, a tunnel devoid of light, brightness, or any lamp. Time passed, yet no light appeared. The uncertainty of the tunnel’s end tormented me – two minutes? Ten? Perhaps half an hour had passed… To await light in the dark tunnels of life is an agonizing and exhausting endeavor.
And now, with so many of our brethren, sisters, and peers confined in the bitter prison of endless tunnels of illness, sorrow, and pain, what right have we to complain?
What do we possess but to seek patience, peace, and blessing, and to ask of the divine beloved – (As Persian Singer Hayedeh sings) – to make our hearts receptive to an enduring and profound peace and love, even when we know not where it lies or what it intends, while the darkness of night trembles our hearts, praying always: “May Your kingdom come, and Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven…”