Whether you are surrounded by the singing of a lamp or the sounds of a storm, by the breathing of the evening or the sighing of the sea, there is a vast melody woven of a thousand voices that never leaves you and only occasionally leaves room for your solo.  To know when you have to join in, that is the secret of your solitude, just as it is the art of true human interaction:  to let yourself take leave of the lofty words to join in with the one shared melody.

--Rainer Maria Rilke
(from Letters on Life,
translated by Ulrich Baer)