“Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow big and strong. It would do the world good if every person would compel himself to often be alone. Most of the world’s progress has come from such. To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence, you hear the truth. The greatest men and women throughout history loved solitude. It defined them. It grounded them. It prepared them for their calling.” – Winston Churchill

So there’s this master swordsman – Musashi Miyamoto who was a ronin or masterless samurai. He fought in a good number of battles as a sword for hire. Already renowned and unbeaten in combat, he isn’t satisfied and decides to retreat into isolation at a forest to perfect his philosophy and technique of combat. This takes him two years. When he emerges, he is about as close to complete as a warrior as humanly possible.

He ends up unbeaten in battle over his lifetime and teaches countless others. The way he wins several fights is extremely clever and doesn’t always require force. Ultimately like the great Bruce Lee, who he influenced, he leaves behind writing chronicling his thoughts – The Book of Five Rings, up there with the other great works of strategic philosophical thought.

The key I think is the decision to choose solitude. Really not an easy thing to do. To forswear human contact, endure aloneness, and ti embrace all the benefits of doing so.

But essential and even necessary. How do you know your true voice when it is constantly competing with those of others and even being drowned out?

Much less the voice of a higher power.

Maybe that’s the real goal and gift in all this – learning to distinguish the signal from the noise.