Human beings are social creatures. It is no surprise that we surround ourselves with friends and family to fill our insatiable hunger for companionship. Companionship is a necessary component in a healthy lifestyle, but how much is too much? The epitaph to Jack London’s great novella The Call of the Wild reads:

Old longings nomadic leap,
Chafing at custom’s chain;
Again from its brumal sleep
Wakens the ferine strain.

This is an excerpt from a poem about humanity’s feral (‘ferine’) qualities. It calls to mind the explorer, the nomad, the hunter that exists in each of us. We are social creatures, but we also have a deeper nature. We have an innate hunger for quiet, for a cool draft of morning air, for time alone with nothing but our own company. If we lived in utter solitude, we would likely not be very happy, but a bit of solitude serves as a wonderful tonic to the woes of urban, social life. Many of us eschew solitude, fearing the feeling of loneliness that tends to accompany it. When we limit our exposure to solitude, are we slowly killing the last bit of our beautiful, powerful, natural, ‘ferine’ self?

Stephen Covey (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) wrote about the process of maturation, describing the three stages of human growth: dependence, independence, and interdependence. It’s a fairly self-explanatory concept. We begin as children, dependent on our parents; we mature into young adulthood and independently discover the world for ourselves; and we eventually enter into an interdependent relationship with our significant other. Interdependence is the ultimate step in our growth as human beings. It is the step on which the greatest human achievements are reached, when people work together toward a common goal. What I’d like to examine is the second step: independence. I’d like to contemplate whether a healthy dose of solitude will allow us more fully to experience the second step of maturation so that we can grow more calmly and confidently into the third step, interdependence.

Many people openly fear solitude. It is an uncomfortable experience to be alone, or to be lonely. Why is it that we tend to equate solitude with loneliness? They are fundamentally different things. Solitude is the undivided attention of oneself. Loneliness is the recognition of a lack of companionship. A person may have a tremendous wealth of strong relationships, but also adore the occasional experience of solitude. I see solitude as a skill to be cultivated. If we are uncomfortable being alone, then we are incapable of experiencing the glory that is the undivided attention of our own self. When we are unable to appreciate our own company, we feel lonely.

A person with healthy relationships should never feel lonely, even when experiencing vast stretches of time out of contact with other human beings. That is to say that we should learn to adore our own company in order to fill this void. Through solitude, we are able to fall in love with ourselves. If we are uncomfortable being alone, is it because we are struck with the realization that we do not actually love ourselves? Relationships with others are necessary for a healthy life; but equally necessary is the relationship with our own mind. Blaise Pascal famously penned that “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” Man finds it difficult to sit in one place with no stimulation, completely alone with the mind; but the mind is mankind’s greatest, least explored frontier. When we are alone, we are able to discover the things in life that are important to us. We are able to realize what we love. Furthermore, we are able to fall in love with the fact that we love the things that we love. We love ourselves simply for being ourselves. We revel in the realization that we are not a movie star or a great politician. We recognize the basic goodness of our thoughts and interests. We are able to become individuals, with tastes acquired purely out of our own personal experiences. We are able to contemplate the dualistic nature of every action and decision we make. If we eschew solitude, our intrapersonal relationship and the understanding of our mind falters.

Through solitude, we are able to construct the foundation of our personhood. We are able to define ourselves with original thoughts. We experience the divinity of our world and the truest depths of human nature: the desire to question, to explore, to pull back the shroud of mystery with a thirst-quenching gaze. When we do this, everything around us takes on a peculiar hue. We learn to find beauty in the most elementary things. We thus open our eyes to the sharpness of the world around us. A brick wall is able to stir emotion like a sunset, because we are able to contemplate the brick wall on our own terms. When we are alone, our mind is forced to think, to reason, to come to terms with everything around us purely by its own devices. Then, when we return to the company of our friends, family, lover, we are able to unravel these experiences and original thoughts.

This is where interdependence comes into play. We take stock of the world with our own intellect, within the great individual universe that exists in each mind, but we then must unwind our thoughts with the help of others, allowing these thoughts to culminate. “It is impossible to know [a thought’s] full extent, one would have to unwind and measure it but, however hard one tries, or pretends to try, this cannot be done without some assistance” (José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, p. 19). I would contend that interdependence is of little value unless the parties involved have first achieved true independence, or comfort with solitude. In order to interdependently unravel a thought, there must first be an independent thought worthy of unraveling. If we go around constantly in the company of others, fearing solitude, then we risk becoming a shell; a shell filled only with the thoughts and opinions of our friends, with the information we receive from the news and from the books we read. We become “deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton” (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, p. 162). Alternatively, when we develop a sense of ease and comfort in solitude, when we learn to revel in pure individual thought, we are able to build our own original foundation and, ultimately, to fall in love with ourselves. When we come to relish intrapersonal company, we are able to tap back into our ‘ferine’ self, and restore the simpletonic vigor that exists in each of us.

To close with a bit of Thoreau, I’ll restate that “I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude” (Walden, p. 119).

 

With love,
The Sauntering Simpleton