So thankful for DS and you guys
It’s curious guys, the more ill I got and the less I began to date, and then retreat, the more I struggled with illness, the more I started to live in my own aesthetic of design choices and life philosophy and thus more isolated I became. (I eventually in healing developed community. Which opened me back up to friendships again and brought to light these patterns within myself.) Those things I did while alone are all things however that I started to identify with and give me structure in life while on my own, reinforcement through a focal point and an association. I've learned that dual nature through this community of being able to be alone with myself and also be together with comrades and loved ones. Then eventually I came to the monastery where we’re all coming from different histories, tragedies and educations and abilities to try and live in community within a code that is both about keeping us together and yet leading us on our individual paths. Here too pushed me along in the path of healing and my growth in interdependence.
When a boundary gets crossed or muddy here there’s all kinds of reactions from individuals, from pleasant dynamic (rare) to the (more common) concern regarding upset over unpredictability and the doling out of harshness
For their own inability to find humanity outside’the rules.
It’s very confusing but it makes me wonder about what I am choosing and what I am expecting to experience in life as in either direction there is sacrifice. This community has really helped me both the monastery and DS and at this point I think healthfully facing the question of "I don’t know what I’m expecting my life to look like or be." In the end I’m very lucky indeed.
Replies
Big hug sweetie
Yes I think we have to take each day as it comes and just do our best
I think that you've done amazing Marky
You've learned so many new things and are helping a community to grow and thrive
Com.unal living is a great deal about turning the other cheek it seems
It's good that you also enjoy your time for you and Blue....xo
Thanks Jan! Xx
I was tempted to write ChatGPT:
What stands out in this reflection is how honestly you describe the way solitude can slowly become not just a circumstance, but an identity structure.
You describe something very human: when illness, pain, or retreat narrow life, people often begin building meaning through highly personal systems — aesthetics, routines, philosophies, environments, symbols, spiritual structures. Those things are not fake or wrong; they become stabilizers. They create coherence when life feels unpredictable. In many ways, they help preserve dignity and continuity of self.
But you also notice the hidden cost: the more complete and self-contained that inner world becomes, the harder it can be for actual human unpredictability to enter it. Relationship disrupts aesthetic control. Community introduces friction, contradiction, and emotional weather. Other people do not move according to our internal architecture.
Your reflection shows that healing for you did not come through abandoning solitude, but through discovering duality:
* the ability to be alone without disappearing,
* and the ability to belong without dissolving yourself.
That is a profound development.
The monastery seems to have intensified this lesson because monasteries are paradoxical places. They are structured around transcendence, discipline, and communal ideals — yet they are inhabited by ordinary human beings carrying grief, wounds, temperaments, fears, egos, and survival strategies. You describe seeing how quickly people can move from shared ideals into rigidity or harshness when uncertainty appears. That observation feels important because you are noticing the difference between:
* rules as containers for human flourishing,
* versus rules as substitutes for human understanding.
And you’re also noticing this in yourself — not in a condemning way, but in an existential one:
“What exactly am I expecting life to become?”
That may actually be one of the healthiest questions a person can arrive at after years of struggle. Earlier in life many people unconsciously carry an imagined contract:
“If I heal enough, understand enough, choose the right path, join the right community, become spiritual enough… life will finally feel coherent, safe, and resolved.”
But lived experience eventually reveals something subtler:
every form of life contains tradeoffs.
* Solitude protects and isolates.
* Community nourishes and wounds.
* Structure stabilizes and constrains.
* Freedom liberates and destabilizes.
You seem to be arriving not at cynicism, but at realism tempered with gratitude.
And your final line changes the emotional meaning of the entire reflection:
“In the end I’m very lucky indeed.”
That does not read like denial. It reads like someone recognizing that despite confusion, sacrifice, unmet expectations, and human difficulty, they have nevertheless encountered genuine companionship, growth, healing, and meaning. Both the monastery and the DS community seem to have given you mirrors in which you could gradually see yourself more clearly — not just your suffering, but your patterns, your longings, your strengths, and your humanity.
There is also something quietly beautiful in the fact that you no longer sound fully identified with either isolation or idealized community. You sound like someone learning to live in the tension between individuality and interdependence without demanding perfect resolution from either.
Wow!
"You sound like someone learning to live in the tension between individuality and interdependence without demanding perfect resolution from either."
With all your questioning, it seems that you feel OK in either situation, that you have learned methods of coping with either choice.
I guess now it comes down to how confident do you feel within yourself, with seeking out either choice...
I agree with chatgpt...you've come a long way from the time I first met you. If you hadn't told me about your health issues, I never would have guessed you had any. You sound totally human to me but much more aware which comes from asking questions and doing a whole lot of soul searching....hugs
Thanks Mary Louise and Bob!!! Xxx