The Lost Art of Being Alone

All the unhappiness of men comes from one thing: not knowing how to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Being alone is a rare thing today. We’re constantly texting, scrolling, calling, and binging. Any stretch of stillness gets equated with loneliness, with being anti-social, with anxiety. Some people feel disoriented the moment they aren’t preoccupied.

We’ve lost the practice of solitude.

And it is a practice. It’s an intentional act, in opposition to nearly everything our society trains us to do. I think it’s a gift, and one that many of us refuse to recognize.

I know it’s difficult. It’s countercultural, and at first it may feel lonely and anxiety-inducing, because we don’t know how to be alone anymore. Your thoughts are under constant attack. You probably haven’t let yourself just be you, away from the noise, in a very long time. Creating that kind of space means accepting boredom and whatever else comes up in the quiet.

It’s an alien thought. It might also be the most restorative thing you’re not doing.

What Solitude Does

Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.

Abba Moses

Solitude builds resilience, creativity, a firmer identity, and lets the repressed surface. My bet is that if you’re struggling to be creative, the boredom and silence we try so hard to avoid can cultivate some of the most fruitful thinking you’ve had in a long time. It’s not that solitude is magic and conjures ideas out of thin air. It’s that you finally have the cognitive space where ideas can flourish. Your signals get crossed less with everyone else’s, and you get a sense of rootedness.

Solitude turns down the volume on all high-energy emotions at once, the good ones (excitement, enthusiasm) and the hard ones (anxiety, agitation) [1]. The highs and lows are evened out and a calm is achieved.

It also takes the load off your mind. You’re not managing anyone’s expectations, choosing your words carefully, or impressing anyone. You get to be fully you. Your internal world gets the undivided attention it needs.

I’ve seen this in my own life. I’ve had times where I set aside alone time and realized just how much is swirling around underneath the surface. It all seems to lay out before me in a way that feels more cohesive, like getting a much clearer and wider viewpoint on a landscape. I feel more settled, and I can work through things more clearly. And almost every time, I find myself calling a close friend afterward and having a great conversation that plays off whatever I’m gaining insight on. The solitude brings me closer to myself and to others.

On Loneliness

Loneliness isn’t the same thing as being alone. It’s the ache of not belonging, feeling on the outside even when surrounded by the familiar. Nobody understands you, nobody knows you.

Solitude is a creator. It doesn’t deplete, isolate, or disconnect. It brings connection within your soul by letting you turn inward.

If you’re the type who struggles with being alone, who struggles with loneliness, you might find power in intentionally engaging solitude. It may even soften it. Letting aloneness happen to you is very different from saying, “I’m going to choose to practice solitude.” The choice is what researchers call positive solitude [2].

Being around people doesn’t erase loneliness, and being alone doesn’t have to create it.

That’s why I think solitude is medicine for the lonely person. Rather than aching for belonging everywhere else, you learn how to exist within yourself and explore what’s underneath. The hard part is that almost nobody knows how to have a relationship with the self anymore. Nearly everything we hold essential interrupts it. The moment you reach for the phone, it breaks [3].

The Conditions

If you want to experience some of that restorative connection, here’s how I’d do it. When I say solitude, I mean no phone, no music, no talking, no texting, no consumption. I even avoid some reading, though that’s my own conviction rather than a research finding.

Find a natural environment that’s peaceful, like the ocean, a hike, a park bench, or a quiet room with a window if you must. Don’t fill the time with productivity. Just observe and exist. Hear your own thoughts, explore what pops up, follow the little rabbit trails in your mind.

And don’t call it isolation. Call it your time to know yourself. When researchers had people reframe alone time as “me-time” instead of “isolation,” the experience itself improved [4]. If you’re nervous about being unreachable, bring your phone on airplane mode and let nothing through. The point is that your solitude has conditions you choose and agree to be bounded by. Choosing them is a part of the discipline.

What Gets in the Way

Expect discomfort. Loud thoughts, some anxiety, maybe a lot of it. It comes with the territory. View that discomfort as a messenger telling you what you need, where your growth points are, which empty places have been waiting for your attention.

If you tend toward worry, rumination, panic, or withdrawal, alone time can be painful at first and takes practice. Set up a little support. Tell a friend beforehand or share the experience afterward. You may need to consciously decide that this isn’t a set time to solve the problems of life.

Another risk: when alone time is unchosen, it can raise loneliness and lower your satisfaction with the day [5][6]. Go into solitude knowing that this is something you are choosing with conviction.

The Practice

Solitude is the furnace of transformation.

Henri Nouwen

For thousands of years, people carved out time for themselves and let reflection sink in. We’re one of the few generations with this many distractions, and we get more every day. The Desert Fathers, whom I take real inspiration from in my own faith, treated solitude as a core spiritual discipline. For me, there’s no better way to get a sense of connection and meaning.

Practical steps:

• Don’t anchor this to a daily quota. Set the bar at something you’re genuinely willing to keep. Maybe thirty minutes. The point is that you choose it and protect it, not that it’s long or every single day.
• Enter with one thing in mind if it helps: a question, a psalm, a journal prompt. A little scaffolding can help the wandering mind.
• Notice your mood, clarity, and relationships afterward. Longer isn’t automatically better. The right window of time is the one that orients you.

If one day you feel pulled to go further, a whole afternoon or even a day, let it happen. Just don’t make the rare big day your standard. Let the consistent practice of solitude bring something fruitful out of you. You may find that you become a more creative and fulfilled person.

Like I said, this is a lost art, and it needs reclaiming. Find a way to disconnect from the things begging for your attention. Step back and allow yourself to be you, with no expectations and nothing but a little scaffolding.

There may be more inside of you than you realize.

Sources