'I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.'
- Henry David Thoreau

Introduction:

If a curious observer from a faraway land comes to ask a typical person of our times, the question: “How long has it been since you last conversed with yourself, sat alone in the winding twilight or the breezy dawn, looked at the stars in awe or at the immensity of life here in wonder, sauntered alongside a flowing river or sat under a blossoming tree, completely alone without desiring any company?”, how long would it take for the person to shrug off the question and the questioner, before carrying along with what they were doing?

Solitude is a currency whose value has been plummeting for quite some time now. Oxford English Dictionary defines solitude as ‘the state or situation of being alone’. Being alone. Nothing more. And yet, how daunting the prospect becomes as soon as we taste that aloneness. Such a bland taste, we wonder. How can anyone in their right mind seek after it?

The Attack on Solitude:

Samuel Johnson, the great literary critic of the 18th century, has written many fine lines on the deleterious effects of solitude. He was known to be great at conversations and loved to frequent social circles, always on the march with his ideas and notions trooping around him, ready to be used by his tongue as a point of attack or defense. He writes of solitude that it is ‘dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember that the solitary mind is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air.’ Now, nobody would want their mind to be extinguished like that. Quite a picture Dr. Johnson portrays here. How glad the 21st-century denizens must feel after hearing their case against solitude being put forward by such a preeminent figure, assuming that they have read him, which seems unlikely.

William Deresiewicz, in his wonderful essay ‘The End of Solitude’, claims that the thing which gives the self its value in our age is visibility. The great contemporary terror thus becomes anonymity. This need to be seen and acknowledged has been greatly exacerbated by social media. ‘To be is to be perceived’ might not have been true when Berkeley spoke it, but it certainly rings true nowadays. Solitude, by definition, cannot be cultivated under the gaze of prying eyes. But now we have developed a need to be seen at all times to know that we exist. All this throws solitude right out of the 21st-century window.

David Hume was one of the most sociable philosophers in the western tradition, and as can be expected, he took a strong stance against the idea of solitude: ‘A perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoyed apart from a company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable.’ Adam Smith, his contemporary and friend, took a similar approach to the idea. They were wary of the fact that being in solitude too much may lead to the inflation of one’s ego. Community keeps the ego in check, and without constant exposure to it, it might become difficult for a person to get over themselves. This can lead to heavy lapses in judgment of the world as well as of self.

There has been a tradition, going back centuries, of departing society and finding oneself in a desert, mountain, or a forest. It was usually done to purge oneself into purity, to access higher states of consciousness, to deepen the connection with God, to find truths about the world, and gain a deeper understanding of the self. Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t like this idea of gaining understanding and wisdom before one’s age. He writes pointedly, ‘To know what you like is the beginning of wisdom and old age. Youth is wholly experimental. The essence and charm of that unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of self as well as ignorance of life. These two unknowns the young man brings together again and again, now in the airiest touch, now with a bitter hug; now with exquisite pleasure, now with cutting pain; but never with indifference, to which he is a total stranger, and never with that near kinsman of indifference, contentment.’ Engagement with the world is what Stevenson demands, especially in the vibrant period of youth. No solitary souls are encouraged here.

The Shadow of Loneliness:

There is always looming above solitude, a dark grey cloud of loneliness. Suppose a person wants to find articles about the way solitude is talked about here in India. They would probably google it, only to be bombarded with articles on the subject of loneliness and the way it has been affecting the Indian youth. One searches for solitude and loneliness shows up unbidden. One may wonder then, what is this loneliness thing anyway? It must be the same as solitude, isn’t it? At least Google thinks so, and it can’t be wrong, right? Olivia Laing, in her extremely depressing book ‘The Lonely City,’ writes, ‘It [loneliness] feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.’ She talks about how loneliness makes one feel shameful and alarmed, and when these feelings radiate outwards, they make the person feel more isolated and estranged. It is a vicious loop. ‘It advances, is what I’m trying to say, cold as ice and clear as glass, enclosing and engulfing.’

People generally conflate the two concepts, making it seem like they are one. They are not. Solitude is a state of being alone, and its primary virtue is self-sufficiency, whereas loneliness is what Olivia Laing described so eloquently. A solitary person may not be a lonely person, and a person can feel lonely even in company. When a person fails to be at ease in solitude, loneliness may start to creep in. Similarly, when a person fails to be at ease in company, it is again an invitation to loneliness. Solitude being different from the feelings of being lonely must be seen as separate.

A Defense of Solitude:

Solitude is like a vaccine against the virus of propaganda. It is only by departing society, from time to time, can one see clearly what was lost in the fog of a million contemporary voices. The ideas which hold sway over the masses can be tested for their true worth, only when alone. Chesterton was writing in the same spirit when he remarked, ‘Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas.’ It is only by marinating your mind in the marinade of ideas can the flavor of each idea be sufficiently perceived. This deeper and broader acquaintance with ideas requires solitude. There is no other way. Accepted ideas may be entertained along with the multitude, but the unaccepted ones, the ones sidelined for one reason or another have to be engaged with in aloneness.

Rainer Maria Rilke, the great German poet, writes of solitude in the same spirit as one would write about a sacred space. For him, solitude is not a choice, it is ‘not something that one can take or leave.’ He states, with perfect humility, that ‘we are solitary’. It is an existential condition. One can either keep running away from this fact, thus continuing to deceive oneself, or one can accept it and be transformed by it. To find this acceptance can be a deeply troubling experience at first. ‘There is only one solitude’, Rilke confesses, ‘and it is vast and not easy to bear.’ Being aware of its difficulty, he assures us that ‘we must hold fast to what is difficult’ because it is only by going through the difficult things can the expanse of solitude be widened and deepened. In the world where everyone seems to be in haste, entering solitude truly makes one feel ‘as if eternity lay before’ them, thus dissolving haste altogether. Rilke advises the reader to ‘love your solitude and bear the pain it causes you with melody wrought with lament.’ He further adds that it ‘will be a hold and a home for you, and leading from it you will find all the paths you need.’

A constant engagement with society may lead a person away from oneself. It is in the nature of society that one cannot be wholly how one wants to be. A lot of deeper instincts have to be curbed while exaggerating the surface instincts. Disharmony may set in after a certain point. A disharmonious world may be bearable, but a soul (in a psychological sense, psyche) out of harmony is its own hell.

The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

It is to re-enter the state of harmony within, that solitude is needed. To question the social self, and to continue questioning the surface actions on the parameters of our deeper desires is essential for a flourishing human being.

We are creatures of fear. Fear of our mortality makes us fear for our life; fear of the world makes us fear for ourselves; fear of our destiny (or lack thereof) makes us fear for our freedom; fear of the pain makes us fear for our joy; fear of insanity makes us fear for our sanity. Being conscious of it makes it all doubly frightening. It is only by facing these fears can the monster be really sized up. It is by standing tall to it will the fear disclose its true proportions. It is easy to keep running away from it, except that the fear would keep popping up in not-so-ideal circumstances. Demons would return; if we run from a single face, they would return with a hundred. It is better to fight them from a position of strength, while they are weaker. Solitude is essential in this regard. These inner battles can only be fought on grounds where solitude has put up a tent.

Reinstating Solitude in our Lives:

Questions arise: How to engage in solitude in an age where there is always at our fingertips, the entire world beckoning for our attention? How to engage it in a manner where loneliness could be kept at bay? How to make our solitude worth the effort that it requires of us?

To put it simply, solitude is never practiced in isolation (yes, the irony is not lost on me) without a community ready at hand. It has always been a dialectic between being alone for a while and being with people for a while. They go hand in hand. Solitude done right enhances engagement with the community, while a deeper connection with a community makes solitude fruitful and enriching. We are social creatures, and society can never be taken out of the equation completely. We may find ourselves spending a lot of time alone, but it is to society we always return. Forever homecoming. It was true for prophets, poets, warriors, and saints, and it is equally true for us, if not more so.

Solitude may be difficult to feel comfortable in at first, but it always pays back. David Whyte’s words are really reassuring on this: ‘Aloneness begins in puzzlement at our reflection, transits through awkwardness and even ugliness at what we see, and culminates, one appointed hour or day, in a beautiful unlooked for surprise, at the new complexion beginning to form, the slow knitting together of an inner life, now exposed to air and light.’

It is with this hope that we may start cultivating our garden of solitude, bearing in mind its unpleasant aspects, but also not forgetting that flowers and fruits will surely arrive because ‘if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’

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