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Beware of the Demonization of Solitude
The pressure is on to socialize more — should you resist it?
I’ve always cherished my solitude. When I initiated my study of the single at heart — people who flourish by living single — I expected to find that they also value the time they have to themselves. What I did not anticipate was just how deeply significant it was to every one of them.
Joan DelFattore, who was 73 when she shared her life story for Single at Heart, said: “Waking up alone I feel no sense of loneliness, no wish to have someone to talk to. The aloneness feels inherent, a trait rather than an event. I can happily stay alone for days on end — writing, gardening, exercising, walking, reading, watching movies. I have a degree of privacy, quiet, and time to reflect that’s inconsistent with a shared life. Without that ability to contemplate, to be rather than to do, on a regular basis, I would not enjoy life nearly as much as I do. I wouldn’t be the same person.”
It is not just Joan, or people like me who are single at heart, who experience solitude in such deeply satisfying ways. Artists, poets, and spiritual figures have long extolled the solace of solitude. Social scientists, though, have been preoccupied with the painful side of aloneness — loneliness. Until now. Solitude is finally having its scholarly moment. New…
