10.9.2025 – language created word

language created word
loneliness to express pain
of being alone

it created the word
solitude to express glory
of being alone

“Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

Paul Tillich in The Eternal Now (New York: Scribner, 1963).

Not wanting to get into any discussion on Mr. Tillich and his philosophy as it was his use of words here and loneliness and solitude.

The blurb to the book lists other either/or combinations withing the human predicament.:

Loneliness and solitude;

Forgetting and being forgotten;

The riddle of inequality;

The good that I will, I do not;

Heal the sick, cast out the demons;

Man and earth —

The divine reality.

Spiritual presence; The divine name;

God’s pursuit of man; Salvation;

The eternal now —

The challenge to man.

Do not be conformed ; Be strong ;

In thinking be mature ;

On wisdom ;

In everything given thanks.

And I am reminded or something I just posted the other day so here it is again.

In the original screen for the movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Ricky Bobby’s two boys are named Hank and Williams, Jr. which gets changed to Walker and Texas Ranger in the movie.

There is a scene that is only on the DVD in the extended cuts where Grandma Lucy is reading to Hank and Williams Jr. They are asking her questions. We see she is reading them Faulkner’s The Bear.

Williams, Jr. asks, “But doesn’t the bear symbolize the old south and the new dog, the encroaching North?”

Hank responds, “Duh! But the question is, should the reader feel relief or sadness at the passing of the old south?”

Grandma asks, “How about both?“

To which Hank gets it and says, “Ahh!… I get it, moral ambiguity! The hallmark of all early twentieth century American fiction!”

Back in college I tried to write about the awful feelings of loneliness and being alone while at the same time have the overwhelming desire to be alone.

Moral ambiguity! The hallmark of all early twentieth century American fiction!