Solitude

A fading practice, a lost interest, an unknown world

“Solitude is the place of purification.”

— Martin Buber

In this technological, interconnected, and progressive age, it becomes increasingly more challenging to find and be in a space of stillness, a sphere of solitude, a coop for contemplation, a resting place for reflection. At this point, there isn’t a call for complete asceticism, an abandoning of anything neoteric or modern, or a refusal of this world; but there needs to be an investigation within our lives and pursuits to realize the current condition of our current existence.

Earlier this year our team had an away game in South Carolina against a conference opponent. Our women’s team, like always, plays before us. As our players were getting ankles-taped, shoes-laced, jerseys-on, and so forth, I pulled out a book that I am reading alongside a friend, in which we have weekly discussions about. While I was engaged and immersed with the text in the locker room, one of our players unexpectedly asked in front of a number of team members: “Coach, how do you become a deep thinker?” This caught me by surprise and I didn’t have a prepared answer. I said the first thing that came to mind: “For example (referencing to the thing on my lap), you can read a book.”

So we warm-up, have our pre-game routine, and compete for 40 minutes. I had some time to search for some ideas and ways about striving towards thoughtful-thinking. Back in the locker room, that player posed his question — however serious — again in the air of victory, and — now — I had a better response: I suggested finding time for solitude. He shot back, “What’s that?” I, thus, explained the concept that was clearly foreign and unlearned.

The point in telling this brief story is that this college student, this athlete, this young person, this Millennial not only does not engage in intentional solitude of any sort but isn’t even familiar with the term. And from this realization, one can say that many a teenager and young adult across this country (and others) are ignorant to the benefits, the purpose, the reason:

• to take a walk among the birds,
• to recline back and enter-into a book,
• to go by a body of water and take-in the mystique of nature, or
• to head to a park, find a bench, and watch others.

Instead, we as a society have normalized the use of cell phones in the shower, at the table, in the car, at our desk in class, at our desk at work, and even made it in someway OK while we’re with the closest ones to us. On an microscale, our technologies enslave us, enable us, hinder us, dominant us — and that’s without saying the effect they have on others. Heeded-and-hooked, we don’t hear what others say, we ignore what others do, we disregard what others really want, we neglect the humanhood that others inherently possess.

This impasse seeps into the time that we are with ourselves. The screen is the eyes we look into, the alert is the voice we hear, the ringtone is the song we sing, the camera is the face we smile at, the phone is the hand we hold.

With these constant distractions and diversions, absorptions and addictions, we don’t even know the sound of our own name, the workings of our own mind, the beat of our own heart, the particulars of our own interests, the passions of our own soul, the longings of our own dreams.

Without solitude, without time alone, without time apart, without time to think, breath, exist, live, we’re ever-consumed, ever-entrapped, ever-enclosed to virtual worlds, with shallow waters, and fool’s gold. We’re always getting pulled-away, pulled-into, pulled-from, pulled-with. We are the servant, the puppet, the car, the leased, the imprisoned, the leaf in the wind.

We have to ask:

• Who will have sophisticated depth and discovered genuineness?
• Who will be especially insightful and uniquely interesting?
• Who will possess unwavering concentration and admirable determination?
• Who will procure steady loyalty and a guiding morality?
• Who will exercise constant selflessness and alert otherness?
• Who will investigate oneself of narcissism, bad habits, and poor decisions?
• Who will develop a composure, a patience, a serenity among life’s capricious nature?
• Who will seek to be an individual among the herd of the followers, the collection of conformists?

With solitude losing friends who’ve lost interest or who’ve remained unmet, the people of our communities, the masses of this world will mesh so blurred, will reach so shallow, will move so synchronistically, will talk so similarly that the inborn distinctness, the apparent specialness, the evident fingerprint, the unmistaken makeup of each one of us will become indistinct, unspecial, inapparent, inevident, unnoticed. Some time to ourselves, for ourselves, with ourselves — unencumbered, uninterrupted, unfettered — could locate where we’re at, point us in the right direction, and send us down a trail that’s never been tread.