Lessons from Solitude

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone” - Blaise Pascal

Six years ago I came across this quote. I can’t remember where I read it or how I stumbled upon it. But I liked it enough to file it away in Evernote. I dug it up today as I saw friends and collegues struggling with staying at home. Reading their comments on social media, I couldn’t help but recall a younger, angrier version of myself who would once have never admitted they were terrified of being alone. And it wasn’t until I was able to admit that to myself, and to try and understand why I felt that way, that I eventually became truly happy with myself. Up until that point, I was like the many people I’d known whilst growing up who were constantly tense. The kind that would argue over the smallest things and take grave insult at any perceived slight. The truth was, I just didn’t know how to live, and behind the facade of normalcy I projected I couldnt stand my own company.

When I realised what a problem I had, I started to force myself to sit alone in a quiet room. Not that I had much of a choice at the time. But I purposefully made the choice not to have any distractions about me. My hands fidgeted. My legs were restless, and I felt myself constantly looking for excuses to phone someone or fix something. In my heart was a terrifying listlessness, as if there was something very wrong about to happen, or that I was missing out on, by simply sitting still whilst everybody was outside walking and talking in the sunshine. It was terrifying. It was like I had been buried alive and forgotten. But then the stirrings of something else emerged. I am still a very deeply religious and spiritual person, and that, coupled with having read philosophy at university, has meant that I’ve always had a certain view of life which might seem morbid to others. For example, now that I consider it, I have contemplated death and what it means to be alive nearly every day for as far back as I can remember. This is not because I am depressed, but because I often find myself thinking about the meaning of my life, or the meaning that I should choose to give it. We’re floating on a rock in a vast universe that doesn’t seem to care. We have no idea how we got here and the more we learn, the more we realise we don’t know. And because none of that mattered, it mattered less what people thought of me, which in turn meant that the expectations I had for my life, expectations that I realised had been set by the people around me whilst I was growing up, were irrelevant.

I started writing and exploring these thoughts, and for a few years the writing was sharp and cutting, because it came from an angry place. And when the anger was gone, I drew upon sadness, and then, in turn, humour. The only important fact was that somehow I was alive. And to be alive meant to have the capacity for thought and for action. It’s all over when we’re dead and buried, but in that time we have when we can act, we can also change what we don’t like, and we can focus on what is important.

I was completely free, as Sartre once said, to be whatever it is that I wanted to be and I suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulder. More importantly, I suddenly felt a sheer joy of being alone with my thoughts. I could read books with more relish, listen to music and enjoy the emotion being conveyed, or just focus on mundane acts like ironing a shirt perfectly because that’s what I happened to be doing at the moment. And it was all beautiful because at any one moment it was what I chose to be doing, or what I felt was necessary towards another end.

Granted, I’ve got a young family now, and the moments when I’m truly alone are relegated to my time on the loo, or the early morning before everybody wakes up. You might say that this is different to being truly alone and isolated from others. Perhaps. But there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. Being lonely is like an ache in the chest that doesn’t leave you even if you’re surrounded by people. It’s an ailment of the heart. But being alone is a physical act by its definition. And when you’re happy with your own company, you can be perfectly happy alone or with other people, without feeling lonely or bored. And that’s no bad thing in a time like this.