The Lost Art of Solitude

Zenhabits has a thoughtful piece on what's happened to the concept of solitude in this age of hyper-connectivity.

The hustle and bustle of everyday life is exacerbated by technology devices that allow us to always be doing something, whether it's productive or not.

In a non-scientific, completely random sampling of friends and family, I found that seldom is someone alone for any significant period of time without performing some action that either connects us to the outside world or occupies our time for no good reason.

As an example, I'm up to Bejeweled level 307 on my iPhone. Sighs.

The article describes some of the benefits of solitude:

• time for thought
• in being alone, we get to know ourselves
• we face our demons, and deal with them
• space to create
• space to unwind, and find peace
• time to reflect on what we’ve done, and learn from it
• isolation from the influences of other helps us to find our own voice
• quiet helps us to appreciate the smaller things that get lost in the roar

It's pretty clear why some of us avoid solitude at all costs. We face our demons? Find our own voice in a world where we're constantly being messaged and directed on what to do? Get to know ourselves? How scary is that?

It takes courage to be alone - completely, utterly, painfully alone, even for a devoted introvert like me. Alone to the point where there are no thoughts or influences other than your own. And it takes an incredible amount of focus to clear your mind of what you need to prepare for dinner, or which work deadlines should be prioritized, as you cease being a puppet to past conversations and conflicts while being present in the now, the future unknowable and unimportant.

A couple of years ago I took my son, then 7, out on our back deck, and we played a game where we didn't talk for three minutes. Instead, we listened, the goal being to identify the sounds of as many different things as we could on a typical warm Saturday morning.

The results were amazing - more than fifty distinct sounds and activities going on in the world around us, the majority blissfully ignored on most days, but not on that day.

On that day, we were present, and engaged in the world around us, making us privy to a universe we'd grown accustomed to ignoring. Sadly, it's a world that often ignores us in return.

Solitude. Go get yourself some of that.