To be alone for any length of time is to shed an outer skin. The body is inhabited in a different way when we are alone than when we are with others.… - David Whyte

Alone, we live in our bodies as a question rather than a statement.

We might at first label the body’s simple need to focus inward depression. But as we practice going inward, we come to realize that much of it is not depression in the least; it is a cry for something else, often the physical body’s simple need for rest, for contemplation, and for a kind of forgotten courage, one difficult to hear, demanding not a raise, but another life.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

The summation of a person’s life is the sum of what they held in their affections. This natural gravity field, this natural gravity well of belonging, which finds a particular coloration according to the way we’re made, is the secret keep to compassion.