I dare to be alone in your arms

Chapter 2 Recommendation Order Loneliness——Indicator of High Emotional Maturity
Wang Haowei

1
At the end of spring, in early April, I took a short trip to Taitung, and I took the first draft of the book Milk Tea with me and read it along the way.The Huadong Rift Valley is vast, the sky is so wide, the mountains are so high, the whole person is quickly embraced by the world, and I forget myself when I read.

One afternoon, I came to Chishang Township, maybe a small settlement called Longzaiwei. A friend brought us here to see an abandoned farmhouse that will be converted into an artist village.I walked alone to the ridge behind the house, and looked at the endless green rice fields in the distance. The seedlings that had just been planted rolled like waves in the gentle gust of wind in the afternoon of rain.I suddenly fell into a trance for a moment, as if I had left several companions in the same company, and I was the only one in the world, and I was a very comfortable person.

Such a moment may objectively take less than half a minute, but it feels like a long, long time to me.

It's been a long time since I suddenly quieted down like this.In the past, at a less busy stage, I often arranged a solo trip, and even bought a round-the-world ticket to travel around the world alone.After a long period of solitude during the journey, maybe seven or eight days, maybe a sudden thrill is over and I can feel at ease, I often enter this state.In this state, I just want to keep wandering like this, and the whole world doesn't care.

This experience started when I was getting more and more comfortable with being alone, and the journey alone just made it easier to catalyze the situation.

2
Many of us, growing up as children, had various experiences of loneliness for different reasons.However, that kind of loneliness is a kind of sadness of being abandoned by the gods, a feeling of helplessly biting one's own wounds.

However, what I am talking about here is being alone, but it is a different feeling.

We may suffer from such feelings of loneliness in our young years.It's just that suddenly, sooner or later, some of us start to feel that nothing matters.The blessings forgotten by the gods, or the pointing and watching of others, no longer have the slightest influence, and even the force of the breeze blowing water ripples is far away.At this time, a person is a world, a temporary but existing complete universe.

When I went to Taitung, I read the book "I Dare to Be Lonely in Your Arms" by Milk Tea. Everything was like hypnosis, and the feeling that I had forgotten due to busyness for a long time was summoned again.

The moment I stood on the ridge and looked at the rice fields, I thought of many things, including the afternoon when I had a conversation with milk tea, in the romantic restaurant near Qingtian Street.

In fact, I don't know milk tea, let alone familiar with it.This kind of conversation is far beyond expectations, but when our mutual friends say, how about a conversation?I just happened to be free, and with my natural curiosity, I gladly wrote my itinerary.

To be honest, chatting with Milk Tea that day was a fun experience, but her question was actually very intellectual, far beyond my expectations.Chef Dana of Merry Bistro also sat aside, listening with gusto.

Dana is younger, and spent her youthful years listening to milk tea songs, which is a fan level.But I have never listened carefully to the works of Milk Tea, and of course I am even more surprised by the many ideas of Milk Tea.However, even a fan like Dana said afterwards: No wonder she likes milk tea so much. Dana means that she admires milk tea even more.

I am really grateful for the book of milk tea.

3
Milk tea not only shared my many feelings and thoughts about my own life, but also led me to see many creative states of mind, including Lu Guangzhong, Chen Qizhen, Lin Yihua, Martha, Song Dongye, Shitou, Zhan Renxiong and a group of friends.Most of these people are music creators, there are also theater or producers, even idols, but they can still have their own world by being alone.

Creation is a very mysterious thing, like alchemy in the Middle Ages, it is often only understood among warlocks but not easy to explain in words.Thanks to milk tea, perhaps because of the blood of Indigo Children, she became a good guide and gave us the opportunity to see the mysterious process of these creators.

The mysteries of creation are not easy to say, but one of them is certain: creation must be lonely, it is about the state of how a person exists.

Loneliness seems to be the most concerned thing of milk tea: maybe it's just now, maybe it's been like this for a long time.

That afternoon, we talked about loneliness.

I mentioned the idea of ​​solitude developed by the British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott (1896-1971).His 1957 essay "The Capacity to be Alone" distinguished comfortable solitude from loneliness in general.

In the general concept, the word loneliness reminds us of sadness, helplessness, helplessness... negative emotions.However, what Winnicott talked about being alone, especially the ability to stay in one's own solitude in front of others, is instead an indicator of a person's high emotional maturity.

The influence of this idea was great, even outside the field of psychology, and it was often cited by his followers.The spiritual master Osho once quoted this concept to explain the love in his heart.

Osho said this: "Only those who have the ability to be alone have the ability to love. This statement sounds paradoxical, but it is not. It is an existing fact: only those who have the ability to be alone have the ability to love, To share, to go into the deepest part of another person's heart - without rushing to possess the other person, not becoming dependent on the other person, not confining the other person to a still life, and not needing the other person as if obsessed. People then allow each other absolute freedom, because they know that even if the other party leaves, they can still be happy in the same way. Their own happiness will not be deprived by the other party, because happiness is not given by the other party.”

4
I have been thinking about how that long moment in Taitung Chishang happened.

Maybe it's me personally, I have been too busy for more than half a year or more, and I have neglected to listen to my inner self.As a result, the overflowing subconsciousness does not need to go through dreams or other things, and naturally flows in one's own consciousness to surface messages.

Perhaps it is from the environmental strength that is so close to the soil and the sky, and the warm embrace from the mother of the earth, who caresses me and takes care of me, so that I have such a beautiful moment, as if I have returned to the embrace of motherhood.

But, more likely, it was everything that Milk Tea shared. There were no fancy words in her writing, nor did she write any sensational stories.

The writing style of milk tea just follows her thinking, her various thinking about the world of life, her own and other people's.And following this kind of thinking, I read, and in the beautiful Rift Valley of Huadong, I suddenly felt a sense of joy.Perhaps, during the self-healing process of milk tea, because of reading all of this, I also shared such healing magic.

In Taitung, the majestic central mountain range towers in the west, looking after all living beings from a height, while the gentle coastal mountain range embraces from the east.In this way, when milk tea comes from the sincere thinking deep in the heart, it begins to arouse our long-forgotten feelings, as if all the original feelings of life that have been gradually wiped out by secular life have returned.

That was the feeling I had in a small settlement in Taitung one afternoon, and it also appeared unknowingly during my conversation in a French-style Bristo called Fengliu Restaurant on Qingtian Street in Taipei City.

Thanks to Milk Tea, and her book, I have had an unexpected rich journey.

(End of this chapter)