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Slow Havamal: 95
May. 24th, 2023 12:42 pmThe 95th verse says that only you know what’s in your heart when you’re alone, but that for a wise person there’s nothing worse than having nothing to love.
Some of us claim that we are fine being alone. Maybe we’ve had plenty of experiences of companionship, and determined that the difficulty isn’t worth the scant reward. We have many hobbies. Our books or our crafts keep us company. A walk outdoors suffices to lift the spirit. Other people may really be overstimulating. It’s possible that some folks just get by better alone.
But it’s also possible that the same solitude that gives us comfort has a hollow core, fraught with longing. We may tell ourselves stories to accommodate the fact that we want to have a companion, but feel unable, unworthy, or that we’ve exhausted the suitable candidates.
It may seem that loving causes pain and sometimes isn’t worth it. That’s true when we pick the wrong object of affection. Odin suggests that nothing is worse, though, than to have no one—at least to the wise. While the poem says “nothing to love,” by all appearances we’re discussing another person. A someone. Why is it that the wise suffer so much when they’re alone?
For starters, feeling alone is probably a side effect of wisdom. There isn’t a single wisdom. It’s not a list of facts. Wisdom is the total relations of all our experiences and the context it gives us for living. So the wiser you get, the more specific your wisdom, as well. It consists of experiences, thoughts, and connections that you and only you can draw. So the wise have a harder time relating to others, even other wise people, because the act of translation becomes monumental if we want to convey anything of depth about the way we see the world. After so many frustrating failures, it seems easier to withdraw.
Perhaps the wise also know, on some level, how important it is to love and to be loved. Some will know from experience—a true love lost, for example. Others will sense it in glimpses of an old couple holding hands, in a flash of appreciation for a sunset, or a tree in the wind. The foolish can’t appreciate what a mistake it is to isolate themselves. They’re still numb to the blows of consequences. But the wise, even as they swear they can be happy in any situation—that that is the mark of a developed soul—are sharp enough to see through those thin words even as they part the mouth.
Some people may truly be better off alone. To many wise folk, though, love lies at the core of human experience. Without it, they can no more stand than a hollowed tree in a gale.
Some of us claim that we are fine being alone. Maybe we’ve had plenty of experiences of companionship, and determined that the difficulty isn’t worth the scant reward. We have many hobbies. Our books or our crafts keep us company. A walk outdoors suffices to lift the spirit. Other people may really be overstimulating. It’s possible that some folks just get by better alone.
But it’s also possible that the same solitude that gives us comfort has a hollow core, fraught with longing. We may tell ourselves stories to accommodate the fact that we want to have a companion, but feel unable, unworthy, or that we’ve exhausted the suitable candidates.
It may seem that loving causes pain and sometimes isn’t worth it. That’s true when we pick the wrong object of affection. Odin suggests that nothing is worse, though, than to have no one—at least to the wise. While the poem says “nothing to love,” by all appearances we’re discussing another person. A someone. Why is it that the wise suffer so much when they’re alone?
For starters, feeling alone is probably a side effect of wisdom. There isn’t a single wisdom. It’s not a list of facts. Wisdom is the total relations of all our experiences and the context it gives us for living. So the wiser you get, the more specific your wisdom, as well. It consists of experiences, thoughts, and connections that you and only you can draw. So the wise have a harder time relating to others, even other wise people, because the act of translation becomes monumental if we want to convey anything of depth about the way we see the world. After so many frustrating failures, it seems easier to withdraw.
Perhaps the wise also know, on some level, how important it is to love and to be loved. Some will know from experience—a true love lost, for example. Others will sense it in glimpses of an old couple holding hands, in a flash of appreciation for a sunset, or a tree in the wind. The foolish can’t appreciate what a mistake it is to isolate themselves. They’re still numb to the blows of consequences. But the wise, even as they swear they can be happy in any situation—that that is the mark of a developed soul—are sharp enough to see through those thin words even as they part the mouth.
Some people may truly be better off alone. To many wise folk, though, love lies at the core of human experience. Without it, they can no more stand than a hollowed tree in a gale.
