Solitude: Appreciating Life with a Dose of Quiet

I’m lucky to have a place to spend an hour or less daily to enjoy time in solitude. At the break of dawn, I go out jogging. If I do it 5:30 AM or earlier, I can traverse a stretch of concrete road about half a kilometer long, and do it for several repetitions WITHOUT seeing any person. The feeling you get is that you are the only person in this part of the planet.

The feeling can be refreshing. I use this time in solitude as my “thinking hours”. I discovered that I can sort out my cluttered thoughts and come up with ideas when it is quiet all around and I can listen to myself. So I no longer belabor my head with queries requiring analytical thinking just before going to bed. I train myself to leave this for my quiet moments at the break of dawn.

So this has been my routine most mornings to start my day. I relish a dose of quiet. There is not a soul around. But I guess that’s an exaggeration. There are souls. After all, the place is a memorial park.

Yesterday, I saw one black-brown cow. It was grazing, and I wondered how its mouth is perpetually in motion, masticating grass the whole day. This morning, I saw one grade-school kid with a brand new black bike. He would zigzag his bike as he breezed past me while I jogged. Perhaps he graduated elementary recently and the bike was a gift. I was of course speculating because this is graduation month. But the boy’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction and I hope his parents could see him right there and then. That moment was priceless.

I always looked forward to meeting elderly persons who usually maintain a modicum of exercise by walking. They always have this anticipation that you will look at them and that they would have a ready smile to greet you back. Sometimes I am in deep thought, and at other times I am struggling to catch my breath as my lungs seem to explode from running. But always I would be disarmed by the ready smile of these senior citizens as I go past them.

Just as suddenly, I would have this reassuring thought that my day will be great. Then I will utter impulsively one “thank you” to the heavens for giving me another day to live. Life is beautiful and there’s every reason to live it fully.

Do you have a place of solitude? I hope so. You would be hard put experiencing that in the highly congested concrete jungles of Manila or other squatter-prone urban areas of the Ph. But try hard to find one. You will appreciate the simple things in life more.