The Hermit
"Enjoy the journey" people aren't serious but they're easy to know. They tend not to get stuck in somber rumination. They fluff themselves up, stop for coffee and get to work on time, and go about their day with breezy panache. Perhaps it's their preference for an unexamined life which flags them as forgiving, friendly and easygoing.
"The path is the goal" people, on the other hand, are serious and harder to know. They mean each step, noticing the weight and texture of the ground beneath them. From meditation master to intrepid trailblazer, these people emit a resonant intensity.
Take, for instance, Chris McCandless, whose fanatical determination to find transcendence through renunciation forced us to consider questions we normally spend our lives avoiding. In an exploration of the "Into the Wild" story, writer Thomas McNamee asks: "Does McCandless's fanatical determination to find it make him a saint, a holy fool or just plain nuts?"
That exact question could also be asked of the Desert Fathers, those ancient people from whom we derived the word, "hermit," who taught the importance of silence, solitude, and simple living to combat distraction and cultivate a deep, undistracted connection (with God).
The Desert Fathers and Mothers did not go to the sands to find answers; they went to find the silence that allowed questions to become audible. The wisdom they offered to the outside world grew from the compost of their lives, a compost which demanded strict adherence to their spiritual values—the anguish of turning the dross of the mind, burning through its scraps and waste—day after day—adding the water of kindness and humility, facing down the thought demons and making a life of this.
Anthony the Great said, "He who sits alone and is quiet has escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, and seeing; but there is one thing against which he must continually fight: that is, his own heart."
The Desert Fathers and Mothers laid the foundation for monasteries. But aside from the monastic order, what is the place of the hermit in society?
We are taught to avoid the image of the recluse—to frame their peculiarity in obscure loss, hurt, or failure. We don't grow up idealizing one who leaves. Yet, mythology tells a different story. It suggests that this encapsulation within the self is not a retreat from the world but the exoskeleton of a chrysalis. At the heart of this radically anti-social act lies the work of growing into the truth of your being while rejecting outward pressures to be a curated reflection of others.
Perhaps the hermit reminds us of something we are only vaguely conscious of, that having the courage and determination to follow your path truly is hard and sometimes lonely, work we'd rather avoid. More importantly, it may remind us of the inevitability of the sanctuary we all must enter at some point to truly come to terms with our lives.