Have you ever dreamed of isolation?  No, I don’t mean a few minutes in your room with your iPod ear buds jammed in your ears perusing facebook or twitter.  I mean isolation for days or weeks, maybe months or even years.  Why would anyone long for isolation?

The question is then: why do people seek isolation?  Backpacker, adventurers, hikers, and thrill seekers all over the world constantly are trying to find ways to get isolation all while writers mark with pen and paper the deep human need for connection with other humans.

I can’t tell you how much I have longed for long-term isolation.  How sweet it would be to simply live with Mother Nature.  The only problem I have found with that is our warped perception of what isolation really would be like.  I could live for probably a couple weeks with the equipment I have stored in a backpack next to a lake with fish.  After a while, though, the fish would taste like excrement, and the food I brought would begin to deplete.  All the backpack tents in the world couldn’t keep me comfortable enough without decent food and some clothes that had seen the inside of a washing machine in the past few weeks.

Let’s be honest.  Our longing for isolation is only so we can step back and look at the map of the road we’re traveling down.  The isolation we long for is the isolation from pain.  But unfortunately, it takes pain to get rid of pain.  That leaves only one option.  Keep on keeping on.