Solitude and Connection
"The greatest thing in the world is to learn how to belong to oneself."
- Michel de Montaigne
We come to know ourselves through solitude, where we disengage from day-to-day habits and obligations. Solitude is a healthy connection with the self; it is not the avoidance of connection to others. Generative solitude creates internal spaciousness, enabling us to access states not often available in our everyday lives. However, the self-intimacy of solitude is not always comfortable as we encounter moments of existential aloneness, and it is natural to want to turn from the discomfort. But if we give into the desire to avoid solitude, we miss the opportunity to come to know what enlivens us and discover surprises about who we are. By cultivating presence in aloneness, we claim our power through authenticity.
Whether experiencing the pain of existential aloneness, hurtful messages we've internalized, or a lack of safety due to past trauma, we might need help healing in order to learn to make friends with ourselves in solitude. This kind of help might come from people who accept us for who we are in our communities, a trusted therapist, or another caring, wise person.
Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) embraced long periods of solitude because he saw it as a requirement for his creative life. Practicing solitude, he wrote, is difficult and requires courage. It is only when we take time to turn from the outside world's distractions and turn within that the magic begins. Between 1902 and 1908, Rilke engaged in written correspondence with a 19-year-old student, Franz Xaver Kappus, who sought Rilke's advice on writing and affairs of the heart. In a collection of these letters, Rilke wrote about the power of solitude to connect us to the transcendent part of our nature.
"It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room, and if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning in our life."
It is within solitude that we make room for all experiences. For Rilke, it is only by connecting to the existential truth that we are solitary that we can find the most profound intimacy with others. He wrote about the interplay between solitude and loving others: "Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being."
May Sarton is a poet who has written extensively about solitude. One of her well-known sayings is: "Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self." Yet this distinction is not always apparent until we know and befriend ourselves. This process can take years and is ever-evolving.
I've not encountered anyone who values solitude and has some form of contemplative practice who hasn't experienced painful and difficult periods within it. With practice moving through these states alone and sometimes joined by someone to help us, we come out the other side. The other side is where we experience the abundance of who we are and feel safe in this stillness. Here, we understand that we are both alone and connected, and that we matter and belong.
Thomas Mann, who won the Nobel Prize in literature, describes the wide range of what we encounter in solitude: "Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But it also gives birth to the opposite: To the perverse, the illicit, the absurd." Only by making room for all experiences do we fully open to the beauty of this life. Kahlil Gibran, known for his mystical book The Prophet, describes this range of experience: "Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow."
We bring ourselves most fully to relationships with others when we are deeply familiar and comfortable with the stillness of our own company. This is how we cultivate authenticity and then share it with others. In the quiet of solitude, we foster greater self-understanding, where we can broaden our knowledge of ourselves and the world.
It's impossible to fully trust that we are loved and belong, no matter how connected we are to others, if we cannot cultivate that awareness within ourselves in solitude. We have a fundamental need to feel as if we belong and that we matter to others. Yet we can better cultivate belonging in life-sustaining relationships when, in solitude, we understand that we already belong as our natural state.
As important as it is to have committed alone time to develop a relationship with ourselves, we must occupy that space in a way that promotes intimacy to ourselves and to that which is greater, to which we also belong. Virginia Woolf wrote, "How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here forever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself."
Woolf writes eloquently about the quality of relationship to the self and surroundings in solitude. Here is another description from her novel To the Lighthouse:
“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that is what now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others… and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures."
Solitude and isolation are easily conflated when we don't have practices by which to come to know ourselves with greater intimacy. Many people do not value their company in solitude and either avoid being alone or avoid the experience of stillness, filling it with external distractions, numbing out, or an overactive mind. Existential psychologist Rollo May wrote, "Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all."
A significant cost of how ubiquitous connectivity on devices has become is how it erodes our capacity for solitude. When we experience discomfort, defaulting to superficial connections on our devices is easy. On the occasions that I go down a rabbit hole online, what begins as curiosity and spirals into a waste of time, it feels like I consumed empty calories and have less fuel in my psychic and creative tank. It is hard to imagine developing quality solitude practices without having electronic time-outs – shutting off our phones and anything else that pulls us out of a state of presence.
Like poets, writers, and artists, we are all called to cultivate intimacy with ourselves in solitude. While we don't all have the same degree of need for solitude, it is essential for all of us. The specific practices are less relevant as long as they cultivate the quality of presence, reflection, and deep listening. Practices of quieting the mind can help us step away from the many distractions, like electronic devices, that interfere with our capacity to be still and turn within.
As increasing numbers of people are experiencing loneliness, one powerful way to heal this isolation is to connect with ourselves by welcoming and protecting space for healthy solitude. Making friends with ourselves within stillness fosters our unique voices and reveals and strengthens the gifts that we can bring to others. Cultivating generative solitude and strengthening our communities, in tandem, allows us to build models of relationship and connection that point the way to what is possible, what we can become, and to elevate what we already are.
It is within solitude that we, as individuals, ripen and differentiate. For Rilke, the most profound human love is "the love that consists of two solitudes that protect, border, and greet each other.” He believed the highest task of intimacy is to stand guard over each other's solitude.