Loneliness and the Self: The Path to Unlocking Potential
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“I retreat into solitude so as not to drink from everyone’s cistern. When I am among the many, I live as the many do, and I do not think I am truly thinking. After a while, it feels as if they want to exile me from myself and steal my soul.” – Nietzsche
Who am I? Am I a self that has come into being upon my own essence? Or am I the self that others see me as? Or am I, in fact, others?
I often think that my potential is being wasted because of my environment. I am sure that many of you share this thought. I will never be certain if I truly have any potential at all. However, one thing I am sure of is this: if potential is a powerful creature struggling to erupt from within us, then the environment we are in must be far stronger, and with its powerful hands, it pushes this creature down so forcefully that no matter how hard it struggles, it simply cannot break free. This is why, every time I go out, I feel an intense pressure in my chest. I become not myself, but them. At times shallow, at times bigoted, at times thoughtless and foolish, even at times prone to violence. Is this really me?
I often feel that awareness is an ineffective element. I change while being aware. While being aware, I destroy my self. Because all these factors are as powerful as fate. Even the person most accustomed to loneliness sometimes hates being alone. Man is a social animal. We owe our progress to this very sociability and unity. But now the debt is paid; there is no more owing. Therefore, we are obliged to realize our own evolution ourselves.
If you truly wish to find your self and realize your potential, you must be yourself, not someone else. Unfortunately, to break this phenomenon, which is as powerful as fate, there is no other remedy than to flee into solitude. Because in every moment you socialize, you will be unable to prevent an exchange of selves. Most of the time, you will adopt the thoughts of people who view life very differently from you. And since most people look at life with a herd mentality, they unfortunately possess mediocre ideas; you will be forced to adopt these. A Japanese proverb says, “The frog in the well does not know the ocean.” As long as you are in the herd, you will be in the well.
In this case, you will not only paste the herd’s self onto your own, but you will also inject people’s perceptions of you into your character and ideas. This injection will be so potent that, after a while, your own character and ideas, along with the potential waiting to erupt within you, will become like a book hidden at the very back of a shelf. Unless you remember that book’s existence, you will not be able to take it out from its hiding place and read it. If you do not give your solitude a chance, that book in which your self and potential are written will wait for years, never to be opened, and in the end, it will be thrown away unread, unopened.
Moreover, with each day you spend as a sheep in this herd, you will truly be turned into a sheep.
“Each one of them sees himself as the butcher of this sheep.” – The Spiral Curve
Your value will go unrecognized and you will be devalued. Just as socializing is a necessity of human nature, butchery is also a product of this nature. Faced with these two coercive forces, a choice is also compulsory: to be a sheep to the butchers and the herd, or to be free and to be “yourself”?
“Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened by the noise of the great men and stung by the needles of the little men.
Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you poisoned by the stings of venomous flies. Flee to where the strong, harsh air blows!
Flee into your solitude! You have lived too close to the small and the pitiable. Flee their invisible vengeance! They are nothing but vengeance against you.
Lift your hand no more against them. They are innumerable, and it is not your destiny to be a fly-swatter.”
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
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