“Solitude must be welcomed rather than feared. In the mental and moral equipment of a radical or critical personality, this realization is of the essence.” — Christopher Hitchens
I’m the inveterate navel-gazer, the incorrigible woolgatherer, the loner who picks his moments in the spotlight and never gets dragged into them. Hardly the social butterfly, I prefer the cozy gloom of the cocoon. While getting out is good, solitude is golden.
I’ve traveled the world with girlfriends, but usually it’s a solo affair — much easier, more peaceful, more relaxed. I meet people on the road, lots, and those fleeting encounters are just the right measure of intimate human contact.
I once had a friend meet me in Japan for part of a vacation and I wrote in my journal, almost as a reminder, semi-dreading the company, “I walk the Earth alone.” I was being facetious. Unfortunately my friend read this. She was light years from amused.
“Hell,” said Sartre, “is other people.” One wonders if he said this with a wink or a wince.
“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” — Jodi Picoult
I’ve never understood people who can’t be alone. I have friends who would never conceive of going to a movie by themselves. I’ve never understood extroverts. I’m the sort who ducks down a different aisle if I spot an acquaintance in the grocery store. I’m sort of like a film noir antihero, alone in my trench coat, head bowed, buckled with ennui, smoking like a fiend, trying to make my way in an unjust world. (Ha.)
I have a mild misanthropic streak, an anti-social strain, though I’m no solitudinarian — actual word! — or recluse. It’s nothing severe enough to prevent me from enjoying a good party or get-together, even if I’m occasionally the guy who leaves early through the back door without saying proper farewells. (“People-proof your heart,” sang the Posies.)
My own skin doesn’t fit well. Which means comfort among others doesn’t come easy. Traveling, I love to read in cafes, scribble in journals at bars, roam streets, cathedrals and cemeteries alone, without the nattering of companions. I move to my own beat, that of a different drummer — and, as a longtime drummer, a pretty good drummer.
“I don’t like being able to be reached. I enjoy my solitude. Even people having my phone number seems like too much.” — Brie Larson
Yes, I quoted Brie Larson. But I like her style here, despite her unbridled exhibitionism as an Oscar-winning actress and all the happy-face fraudulence that it demands. I searched her images and they’re topless this and bikini that. She shares that brainless visual cotton-candy with a boundless global viewership. So much for solitude. And yet I believe her quote, and wholly relate.
She probably doesn’t like to be reached because she gets six thousand calls a day. I don’t get any, maybe two, and it’s still too much. Even marketing calls feel like an invasion on my solo-hood. When my phone rings my first response is, Who the —-?
“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.” — May Sarton
There is indeed a difference between loneliness and solitude, and the gulf is dramatic. Loneliness yearns for something more, usually other people, to fill an existential hole. There’s a neediness, even a dependence and desperation, there. It enshrines incapacity.
In solitude one reaps energy from oneself, without the jumper cables of outside forces. You create your own space on your own terms, with your own powers, cultivating your mind, with the option of joining the wide world at anytime. Great freedom defines solitude. It’s the incubator of creativity and art. It’s the locus of self-communion. And, far from being bereft and desolate and unduly selfish, it’s all rather invigorating, nourishing and exhilarating.
GNASHING. 