The surprising power of solitude

"Even using the bathroom would present me with an opportunity for entertainment - as if not having something to scroll through would equate to boredom so severe I might not survive."

Dear fellow human, 

For me, time spent alone is a joy. Whilst I love socialising in certain ways and for certain amounts of time, time spent with others must be punctuated by long expanses of reflection. This being my natural preference, despite pretending otherwise for many years, I was surprised to discover over the last couple of weeks that I am not comfortable with solitude. 

Whilst I have always chosen to spend lots of time alone, or at least as much as I could cobble together around working as a lawyer, that time was rarely (if ever) spent in solitude. Take a working day as an example - within minutes of waking up I would be listening to music or watching a YouTube video whilst getting ready, at the gym I would be listening to music so intense it drowned out the pain, on the tube I would be listening to a podcast or reading a book, at work - well, there wouldn’t be time to eat lunch away from my desk, and by the time I got home at 9pm I would flop on the sofa in front of the TV before going to bed to do it all again the next day. 

There were even restless nights where I would wake up wired in the early hours and find myself watching TV, browsing work emails, or ‘catching up’ with people on social media. Come to think of it, even using the bathroom would present me with an opportunity for entertainment - as if not having something to scroll through would equate to boredom so severe I might not survive. 

In this version of my life solitude didn’t feature, even when I was alone. Now, you may be thinking - but aren’t you in solitude when you’re alone? According to Kethledge and Erwin in their book ‘Lead Yourself First’ solitude is not about what’s happening in the environment around you, but what is happening in your brain. They define solitude as:

‘a state of mind, a space where you can focus on your own thoughts without distraction, with a power to bring mind and soul together in clear-eyed conviction.’

Put another way, Cal Newport summarises solitude as:

‘a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds’. 

Solitude deprivation is a phrase coined by Cal Newport as:

‘a state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.’

This phenomenon has undoubtedly been on the rise since the technology revolution began. Solitude deprivation became the norm in my life when I got my first smart phone. From that point on I was constantly plugged in. I could access unimaginable quantities of information at any moment of the day, and any task that did not involve my phone felt boring by comparison to the noisy distraction of my screen. Andrew Sullivan, a former prolific blogger who now rights

The Weekly Dish

noted in his essay entitled ‘I Used To Be a Human Being’:

‘Although I spent hours each day, alone and silent, attached to a laptop, it felt as if I were in a constant cacophonous crowd of words and images, sounds and ideas, emotions and tirades - a wind tunnel of deafening, deadening noise.’

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As I shared in recent letters, I am taking a 6-month break from social media and reassessing my relationship with technology more generally. One of the unforeseen benefits of these pivots, that felt like a punishment at the time, was the solitude I suddenly found myself drowning in. Without a smartphone to fill the moments whilst I was waiting for my coffee to brew, or the traffic lights to change, I felt the emptiness. Or, maybe, I felt empty? Without other people’s thoughts, ideas, and opinions to fill my brain there didn’t seem to be much else to occupy me. A few minutes felt like a chasm, a black hole, like it would never end. 

I appreciate how melodramatic this sounds, but I’m just being honest. I was shocked by how uncomfortable I was simply experiencing a moment alone without input from anything or anyone. I could feel my brain wanted something to attach to, feed off, be distracted by. All I had was me, and it felt like that wasn’t enough - I was so unfamiliar with my internal landscape that I didn’t know how to hear myself despite the deafening silence.

I felt like this for the first two weeks, but this week (the start of week three) something is shifting. This morning I was doing laps at the pool when I noticed I hadn’t listened to anything on the way there in the car. Now that I use a flip phone (more on that in a future letter), music doesn’t start automatically blaring when I turn the engine on. Listening to music has become an active choice, and this morning it didn’t even occur to me to consider listening to anything at all. I hadn’t noticed my solitude, nor felt uncomfortable with it. I’m not exactly sure where my mind was, probably wandering on its own.

Swimming has actually been one of my best teachers. There is no way to escape being by yourself, in solitude, when you are submerged in a pool of water. The act of swimming has become noticeably more pleasurable. I enjoy pondering the occasional thought, but I inevitably lose track by the time I push off the wall to attack another lap so most of the hour is spent in silence. I don’t get bored like I used to. I swim longer, and further - in part thanks to my fitness improving, but in part thanks to my ability to be in solitude for longer periods of time without feeling the urge to get out of the pool and return to the comfort of my devices.

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So now I find myself spending most mornings entirely disconnected in solitude. Only three weeks of practice and I’ve expanded my ability to experience solitude from nothing (or barely seconds) to hours. Not that it’s a competition, of course - I am not experimenting with this to ‘create the best life I can live’ or ‘be the most productive I can be’. I just want to feel better in my life; the life that I have right now. And, so far, solitude seems to be helping.

Here are some of the ways I practice solitude: 

• I walk Alfie first thing in the morning without listening to anything. I take my phone but leave it switched off.

• Most days I don’t look at my phone until the afternoon (when I spend a designated period of time checking and responding to messages or calling family and friends).

• I plan and journal daily about what I have to do, feelings, thoughts, and opinions. During this time I am not listening to anything, watching anything, or researching anything online.

• I choose not to listen to anything in the car from time-to-time.

• I swim.

I find inspiration in this list of practices

Peco

and

Ruth Gaskovski

curated for ‘simple acts of sanity’ this winter, many of which lend themselves to solitude.

Here are some of the benefits I have noticed since intentionally incorporating more solitude into my life: 

• I wonder less about what else I should or could be doing - the ‘what’s next’ mentality is less present.

• I feel less anxious (which means a lot to me as someone who has a generalised anxiety disorder).

• I spend more time around my solitude intentionally on activities that are rewarding to me. For example, I’m writing more, reading more (I’ve gone from reading nothing to 300+ pages a week), journaling more, note-taking more, and making more art.

• I am more in-tune with my surroundings. For example, this week I noticed the sound of rain on the hood of my jacket when walking Alfie in the woods, and birdsong whilst I was on my way to the gym. Andrew Sullivan had a similar experience when he took intentional time away from technology, sharing:

  ‘I heard birdsong for the first time in years. Well, of course, I had always heard it, but it had been so long since I listened.’ 

• I feel more connected to my experiences and what I feel and think. As Virginia Woolf said:

  ‘In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.’

• It feels as if time has slowed down.  

• I am appreciating the time I choose to spend with family and friends more because of the opportunity for reflection and gratitude solitude brings me. As the poet and essayist May Sarton wrote in 1972:

  ‘I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my ‘real’ life again at last. That is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone…’ 

• I have been able to ponder ideas and action them, making more progress on projects in the last few weeks than I have done in the last six months of 2023.

Michael Harris reports in his 2017 book ‘Solitude’ that the relevant literature suggests three crucial benefits of solitude:

‘new ideas; an understanding of the self; and closeness to others’.

My experiences certainly dovetail with these conclusions.

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As Virginia Woolf noted in her 1929 feminist manifesto, ‘A Room Of One’s Own’, the people who have historically written about and been proponents of the power of solitude are, perhaps unsurprisingly, men. Women have been systematically denied the space in which to cultivate a state of solitude. We still live in a patriarchal society fraught with intersectional social injustices that impact our freedom from cognitive oppression to varying degrees and now we also have the distraction of technology with which to contend, a combination that surely affects everyone to some degree. 

Know that if you barely spend any time in solitude, it does not mean that you are failing. Perhaps there are systemic reasons why you are unable to access solitude, or perhaps there are addictions keeping you trapped in distraction. This letter is merely an anecdotal experience offering seeds of curiosity and interest you may or may not choose, or be able, to sow in your own life.

It is noteworthy that now, at this point in my life, I feel better able to access solitude. Sure, I hadn’t discovered how vital solitude is to me back when I was working around the clock as a lawyer. But let’s hypothesise that I did; would I have been able to access solitude as easily as I can now? I don’t think so.

I am able to access solitude more easily at this point in my life because I work for myself and can therefore structure my time how I wish. Besides having an enthusiastic and energetic dog, I don’t have children or any other dependents. I live with my partner in love and life who shares household and emotional labour with me. I know now that I am autistic, ADHD, have mental health conditions, and I am learning how to take care of myself with this new knowledge. I am older, and a little wiser, so feel better able to accept myself.

All this to say: our ability to access solitude will look different over our lifetimes and different to each other. Even now, whilst I am knee-deep in exploring solitude, there are parts of or entire days where solitude isn’t accessible to me (frequently because of my neurodivergence), and the joy I find in activities that don’t allow for solitude like listening to music and podcasts, reading, and watching movies outweigh my desire for solitude. But, as with so many of my reflections over the last year, the key is awareness; endeavouring to know myself just enough to make intentional decisions and love myself whatever I choose. 

I believe these lessons we stumble upon weave into the landscapes of our lives in unpredictable ways. Who knows what my relationship to solitude will look like in weeks from now. But a recurring theme in my life, which my interest in solitude raises once again, is that of questioning why I have been in constant pursuit of something more. Always adding, never subtracting. What if, counter to our cultural norms, it’s less about more and more about less? What if allowing yourself to just be, in swathes of or mere moments of solitude, is where the answers lie?

Sending you love,

Charlie

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