The Spectrum of Solitude

Now that Introvert UpThink has passed the four-year mark, I’ve paused to reflect on my posts about introverts and solitude.

For our physical and mental well-being, introverts have a need to pull back from the hubbub of life for quiet time alone to recharge. Accordingly, the topic of solitude recurs often in various ways on Introvert UpThink. I’ve just gone back through those posts looking for patterns, insights and resources on what it means to be alone.

Which circumstances count as solitude? That’s a much harder question to answer than you might expect. At one end of the spectrum, you can read about Admiral Richard Byrd’s months-long stay alone in 1934 at a remote weather station in Antarctica. Except for periodic radio contact with his base camp, he was 123 treacherous and icy miles away from human help. By anyone’s criteria, that surely counts as solitude. In the same category I would put Christopher Knight’s 27 years living in thick Maine woods apart from other people. Though he stole into empty cabins for supplies during the off-season and occasionally heard hikers passing near him, he only once in all those years came face to face with other humans. To me, that’s clearly a long stretch of serious solitude, also.

Two fictional accounts of isolation that I discussed come close to the Byrd/Knight end of the spectrum: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe and Isola by Allegra Goodman. In both instances, characters marooned involuntarily on an island need to establish physical and emotional self-sufficiency with limited human-made supplies and, for a long period, no one else around. Again, their predicament clearly included solitude.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have people discussing their bouts of solitude when they mean that they’re traveling, living or just eating out on their own, without companionship, amidst the human bump and grind of a city or town. Examples of this that I’ve posted about include Trina Moyles’s seasons at remote fire towers in rural Canada and Stephanie Rosenbloom’s solo trips in Paris, Istanbul, Florence and New York City. Those are comparatively light-weight or sporadic versions of solitude, because human interaction was always just a phone call or a shoulder tap away.

Between those extremes I would put Henry David Thoreau in the 1850’s, with his two independent years at Walden Pond, and Ken Smith, the so-called “Hermit of Treig,” who in the present day lived intrepidly on his own in the Scottish Highlands for 40 years. Both men relished substantial time alone with nature, but also fell in easily and pleasurably with passersby or visitors.

When I put these eight narratives together with today’s alarms about the supposed “epidemic of loneliness,” I can’t help but marvel at two truths. First, many people have a remarkable capacity for resilience. Only one of these eight accounts included serious anguish about missing human contact, which experts inform us is a universal, unbendable human need. Consider that the United Nations has outlawed solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days as inhumane, defining solitary confinement as being without human interaction for at least 22 hours per day. Yet people like Thoreau not only endured such solitude, they reveled in it. (He did confess that he felt lonely at Walden Pond a few weeks into his solo adventure – for exactly one hour.) Doubtless, we experience solitude differently when we have chosen it than when it’s forced on us. But it can be a choice – a choice that sits better with those who are naturally inclined to experience apartness as restorative.

Second, let’s celebrate the fact that some humans take temporary solitude, whether daylong or months-long, perfectly in stride. After all, we need people who thrive as lighthouse keepers, surveyors, back-country rangers, foresters and geologists, way out in who knows where. Or even just spending eight hours a day alone analyzing words for Merriam-Webster. A few years ago The Atlantic ran a great article about people who work nights because they find quiet time alone delicious. Long live the solituditarians!