I keep seeing articles about the “epidemic of loneliness,” suggesting that being alone is unnatural and even a kind of torture. But loneliness is just another name for solitude, and solitude is something that people used to treasure.
Obviously, we can’t be happy without some human contact. We are a sociable species; that’s how we survive. We have the self-protective herd instinct that tells us that it is safer to conform, follow the leader, and go with the crowd. This behavior can be seen in its purest form in your local high school, where ‘fitting in’ is practically a religion, and in politics, where it is literally a religion.
What makes us different from bees or lemmings is that we can and do break away from the herd and think our separate thoughts. We are bees with a perspective on the hive, lemmings with opinions about suicide, which allows us to learn and to argue about things, even when it gives us a headache. The times when we are separated from
the swarm, mentally or physically, are potentially creative moments, thinking time. This is much rarer than it used to be.
The electronic revolution has guaranteed that we rarely come face to face with our own unmediated thoughts. Nobody seems to have the slightest desire to pause for reflection. We are never alone, unless the battery runs out.
I don’t think we should be so afraid of being alone, but then I was lucky. I was an only child and solitary by nature. An empty house was my idea of paradise. I never had much time for other children or adults, although I always had time for animals. Later, I discovered that even people could be quite interesting and become as sociable as I wanted to be. If I had been born today, I might have been sent for psychiatric treatment. Instead, I learned the value of solitude.
I’m not recommending the lifestyle of a hermit. Henry David Thoreau wrote often and lyrically about solitude, but he was constantly involved with people, with nature, and with his own philosophy. Solitude was just an essential part of his creative life.
What we lose in the state of solitude is the reassurance of being part of a crowd. What we find in that silence, all media switched off, is ourselves. That’s why writers and artists search for solitude. It allows them to bypass what everybody believes, everybody knows, and everybody sees. Solitude doesn’t necessarily lead to originality, but it certainly opens the door.
There are other kinds of solitude, of course, the brutal isolation of solitary confinement, which has nothing to recommend it, and the solitude of fear. Our growing class of billionaires, perhaps haunted by thoughts of what happened to the aristocrats in the French Revolution, have provided themselves with deep bunkers, seagoing yachts and private islands to guarantee their personal survival if the worst happens. Whatever the fate of the rest of the world, these precious few will be safe. I just hope they won’t be lonely
