Love and Suffering
Finally, Moustakas directly addresses the value of loneliness as it relates directly to the matter of love. More generally, the value of loneliness relates to what I identified in the first essay in this series as “autotelic” relationships. These are relationships that exist and are nurtured for their own gratification. They are not meant for the achievement of some outside goals (as is the case with transactional relationships. Accord to Moustakas (1961, p. 101):
“To love is to be lonely. Every love eventually is broken by illness, separation, or death. The exquisite nature of love, the unique quality or dimension in its highest peak, is threatened by change and termination, and by the fact that the loved one does not always feel or know or understand. In the absence of the loved one, in solitude and loneliness, a new self emerges, in solitary thought. The loneliness quickens love and brings to it new perceptions and sensitivities, and new experiences of mutual depth and beauty.”
Moustakas (1961, p. 101) now returns to his initial inquiry into the role played by suffering (our own or that which we witness in addressing the needs of other people):
“All love leads to suffering. If we did not care for others in a deep and fundamental way, we would not experience grief when they are troubled or disturbed, when they face tragedy or misfortune, when they are ill and dying. Every person is ultimately confronted with the pain of separation or death, with tragic grief which can be healed in silence and isolation. When pain is accepted and felt as one’s own, at the center of_ being, then suffering grows into compassion for other human beings and’ all living creatures. Through pain, the heart opens and out of the sorrow come new sensations of levity and joy.”
We might ask if some suffering is involved in all autotelic relationships. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and Sanford (1980) observe that all Flow and deep learning experiences involve some balance between competency mixed with support, on the one hand, and challenge mixed with anxiety, on the other hand. Perhaps the Flow to be found in autotelic relationships similarly involves a delicate balance between joy and fulfillment, on the one hand, and despair and potential loss, on the other hand. Moustakas (1961, p. 101) seems to be suggesting that this is the case—with the Flow-like outcome being deepened sensitivity:
“All suffering which is accepted and received with dignity eventuates in deepened sensitivity. One cannot be sensitive without knowing loneliness. To see is to be lonely–to hear, feel, touch—every vital, solitary experience of the senses is a lonely one. Anyone who senses with a wide range of delicate feelings and meanings experiences loneliness. To be open to life in an authentic sense is to be lonely, for in such openness one hears and feels and senses beyond the ordinary. Through loneliness we are refined and sensitized and open to life’s lofty ideals and influences: We are enabled to grow in awareness, in understanding, in aesthetic capabilities, in human relations.”
The question becomes: is the Extravert’s search for enriching experiences aligned with Moustakas’s attention to the experiences associated with Love and Suffering? Or perhaps is the Introvert’s orientation toward depth rather than breadth more closely aligned with Moustakas’ conclusions. At the very least, we are focusing on autotelic rather than transactional relationships when approaching Moustakas’s observations regarding loneliness.
