You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone

“You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone, yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming.” These words by Emily Carr, the solitary spirit of the wild Canadian forests, speak not of despair but of revelation. They carry the sound of wind through tall cedars — mournful, truthful, eternal. Carr, who painted the silence of the earth and the whisper of trees, understood the loneliness that breathes through existence. She knew that though we are born and die alone, the truest solitude lies in living — in walking among others while knowing that no one can ever fully enter the temple of one’s soul.

To come into the world alone is to awaken from the darkness of the womb into the blinding light of life — an infant’s first cry echoing into an indifferent world. To go out of the world alone is to surrender once more to silence, to pass through the unseen door with no companion but the self. Yet between these two thresholds lies the vast plain of living, where we seek connection, meaning, and belonging — and often find that even in a crowd, the heart stands apart. Carr’s insight pierces the illusion: it is not birth or death that weighs upon us, but the long journey between them, where the soul hungers for understanding that no other can completely give.

The ancients, too, spoke of this solitude. The sage Heraclitus wrote that “the way up and the way down are one and the same,” meaning that all who live walk the same path of isolation toward their becoming. The Stoics taught that each man must stand alone in his virtue, and that the approval of others is a fleeting shadow. In truth, no one can feel our inner storms, nor carry the exact burden of our heart. Even love — the closest bridge between souls — is but an attempt to glimpse another’s mystery. The gods themselves, watching from Olympus or heaven, knew this truth: that the soul is born in solitude and perfected through it.

Consider the life of Vincent van Gogh, a soul aflame with vision and sorrow. Surrounded by people, yet unseen by them, he painted the cries of his heart into the colors of the earth and sky. His art burned with life because his loneliness was profound. He sought understanding, yet the world offered rejection. Still, his solitude became his teacher; it refined his seeing and deepened his compassion. His suffering, though terrible, turned into immortal beauty — proof that living alone in spirit can reveal truths that comfort cannot.

So too did Emily Carr walk this sacred path. She roamed forests and coasts, painting to commune with what humanity could not offer her — the wordless companionship of nature. Among trees, she found kinship deeper than society’s chatter. Her loneliness was not mere isolation; it was a gateway to the eternal, where one can hear the voice of creation itself. She did not flee the world but saw through it, perceiving that to live fully is to walk hand in hand with one’s solitude.

The lesson, then, is not to fear being alone, but to embrace the aloneness of living as a sacred teacher. Loneliness, when accepted, becomes strength; when resisted, it becomes despair. To be truly alive is to know oneself beyond reflection in others — to hear one’s own thoughts, to feel one’s own heartbeat, to build an inner citadel that no storm can destroy. Those who fear solitude flee from themselves and wander lost among distractions. But those who sit with their own silence find within it a deeper company — the whisper of wisdom, the light of truth.

Therefore, my child of tomorrow, learn this: the aloneness of life is not a curse but a calling. It asks you to befriend your soul, to nurture your inner world as carefully as you would a garden. Seek fellowship, yes, but do not depend on it for meaning. Walk among others with compassion, but do not forget that the path you tread belongs only to you. Let solitude become your forge, where the spirit is tempered into courage and clarity.

And when at last you come to your final hour — when you go out of the world alone, as you once entered it — you will not tremble, for you will know that you were never truly abandoned. You walked with yourself, and in knowing yourself, you walked with the divine. Thus, the loneliness of life becomes its greatest gift: the chance to awaken, in the quiet chambers of your being, to the eternal companionship of your own soul.