On "Being Alone" vs. "Being, Alone" (or: On Loneliness and Solitude)

Everyone is asking whether being alone is good or bad. It's not a new question. Here are some answers.

Solitude is in the air. Is it good or bad? Is wanting to be alone common? Is it healthy? Is solitude the same as loneliness? Is there meaning to be found in a lonely life? These are not new questions. Here are some answers.

Solitude in the Air

In a piece entitled “On Solitude,”

Vex King

(Good Vibes, Good Life) writes, “So when you find yourself alone, remember—you are never truly by yourself.” Comments on a recent post by

Susan Cain

(Quiet and Bittersweet) — in which she asks, “Have you reached this point yet, of being who you truly are? Or are you still pretending?” — turn to solitude.

Abhishek Chakraborty

also addresses “The Difference Between the Pain and the Glory of Being Alone” (starting engagingly with a comic), and says Cain doesn’t go far enough, because solitude is good for everyone, not just introverts.

Samantha Rose Hill

reflects on American poet Jane Kenyon’s poem “Otherwise,” and turns our attention to “Between Solitude and Loneliness” by Kenyon’s husband and fellow poet Donald Hall. Also wondering about solitude vs. loneliness,

Antoine Geraud

writes (in French) about “the epidemic of loneliness” in the U.S. and France — using the French word solitude, which means both “loneliness” and “solitude.” In the context of AI and technology,

Alberto Romero

(“A blog about AI that’s actually about people”) has a post entitled “You Can't Tech Away Loneliness,” the inherent assumption of which is that loneliness/solitude is bad.

So which is it? Is solitude good or bad?

Ancient and Modern Wisdom

Two-thousand years ago the Roman statesman Cicero wrote of the Roman general Publius Scipio Africanus that he:

“…was never less alone than when he was alone.”¹

That's the second half of a sentence. The first half is that Scipio was:

“…never less idle than when he was idle.”

But even though leisure and solitude were productive for Scipio, Cicero laments, “I wish I could say the same for myself.’’² It seems that Cicero dealt less well with solitude than his military hero. Enlightenment philosopher and writer Voltaire had the same thing on his mind nearly 2,000 years later:

“A busy solitude is, I believe, the happiest life.”³

Jumping back to antiquity, Ecclesiastes suggests plainly:

Two are better than one... If they fall, one will lift up the other, whereas one person who falls has no other to lift him. And if two lie together, they will be warm, but how can one be warm?⁴

Genesis states that Eve was created because:

“People should not be alone.”⁵

The 17th-century English poet Milton observes of Genesis that:

“Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named not good.”⁶

adding, interestingly, that he doesn’t care whether loneliness is a thing or the lack of a thing.

And yet the eminent 20th-century physicist Albert Einstein wrote:

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”⁷

Transcendentalist writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau made a career out of being alone, writing, for example:

“I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.”⁸

Over 1,000 years earlier, Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai wrote:

“The two of us gaze at one another, never tiring // Just me and Jingting Mountain.”⁹

The first line has the flavor of a love poem, but the second line jolts the reader toward solitude. (The title gives away the twist, though: “Sitting Alone on Jingting Mountain.”)

Via

Letters of Note

, we find more people who love solitude:

“I have 3 whole days of solitude still… The others are packed with the damnable disease of seeing people.” (modernist author Virginia Woolf)¹⁰

“I don’t feel particularly proud of myself. But when I walk alone in the woods or lie in the meadows, all is well.” (existentialist writer Franz Kafka)¹¹

“I have reverted to solitude… When the telephone rings and it is a wrong number I feel a rush of thankfulness.” (novelist and poet Sylvia Townsend Warner)¹²

“I am one of these strange f-ers who finds great pleasure in being alone.” (realist author Charles Bukowski)¹³

Bukowski turns to an interesting nuance. He thinks that he is odd for enjoying solitude.

Modernist painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso suggests solitude may have a purpose beyond simple enjoyment:

“Nothing can be done without solitude. I have created a solitude that no one suspects.”¹⁴

Three Positions: The Good, The Bad, and The Useful

So Li Bai and Thoreau and Voltaire promote the inherent value of solitude, along with Kafka and Virginia Woolf and many others.

But Ecclesiastes is clear that it’s bad to be alone, so why would anyone be alone on purpose? Genesis agrees. So do modern bloggers Antoine Geraud and Alberto Romero, and a host of other writers.

Picasso thinks that solitude, while perhaps not enjoyable, is at least productive.

Bukowski agrees with Li Bai and Thoreau, but only for himself.

Einstein apparently grew into his solitude as he aged.

Taken together, this collection of nearly 3,000 years of wisdom presents three positions:

1. Solitude is inherently good.

2. Solitude is inherently bad.

3. Solitude is inherently useful.

and two nuances:

4. Different people approach solitude differently.

5. People approach solitude differently as they age.

Answers

All of which brings us back to Cicero, who (once again) has his finger on the pulse of the human condition. Some people may thrive in solitude, he says, but he cannot; and presumably there are many people like him who also cannot. His hero Africanus did not feel alone even when he was alone.

And how you feel is what matters.

When discussing solitude, people often mix up a physical condition with an emotional condition. (It’s like the difference between cold weather and feeling cold. It’s only the feeling that matters.)

This is why there’s a difference between solitude and loneliness (whether your language reflects it or not) — or, as I’d like to put it, there’s a difference between “being, alone” and “being alone.”

Solitude can apparently be beneficial for some but also deeply painful for others, so it should not be universally romanticized or demonized.

In modernity we see the curse of such inappropriate romanticization: People who are lonely end up battered anew by the suggestion that they are suffering for no reason. And with inappropriate demonization, some people who are alone live less happy lives than they could.

Throughout history, solitude has appeared as both a blessing and a blow, depending on context and even more on individual temperament. Let us therefore not think that we are doing something wrong if we want to be alone. But let us also not think we are doing something wrong if we don’t.

1. "...numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus, nec minus solum, quam cum solus esset," De Officiis, III.1, 1st c. BCE.

2. “Vellem nobis hoc idem vere dicere liceret,” De Officiis, III.1, 1st c. BCE (using the humble nobis, “us,” to mean “me”).

3. "La solitude occupée est, je crois, la vie la plus heureuse," letter to Frederick the Great in 1751.

4. “טוֹבִים הַשְּׁנַיִם מִן הָאֶחָד אֲשֶׁר יֵשׁ לָהֶם שָׂכָר טוֹב בַּעֲמָלָם.  כִּי אִם יִפֹּלוּ הָאֶחָד יָקִים אֶת חֲבֵרוֹ וְאִילוֹ הָאֶחָד שֶׁיִּפּוֹל וְאֵין שֵׁנִי לַהֲקִימוֹ.  גַּם אִם יִשְׁכְּבוּ שְׁנַיִם וְחַם לָהֶם וּלְאֶחָד אֵיךְ יֵחָם” Ecclesiastes 4:9-11.

5. “לֹא טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ” Genesis 2:18. The text specifically talks about “Adam” not being alone. My assumption here is that Adam stands for “any human” because the text is about the human condition.

6. Tetrachordon, 1645. Text updated to modern spelling norms.

7. Out of my Later Years (1950), published in English as a translation of Einstein’s previous writings. But I have not been able to find the German. I suspect this is a paraphrase of “Ich bin ein richtiger ‘Einspänner’, der dem Staat, der Heimat, dem Freundeskreis, ja, selbst der engeren Familie nie mit ganzem Herzen angehört hat, sondern all diesen Bindungen gegenüber ein nie sich legendes Gefühl der Fremdheit und des Bedürfnisses nach Einsamkeit empfunden hat, ein Gefühl, das sich mit dem Lebensalter noch steigert. Man empfindet scharf, aber ohne Bedauern die Grenze der Ver- ständigung und Konsonanz mit anderen Menschen,” roughly, “I am a true ‘one horse carriage’ who has never wholeheartedly belonged to my state, my homeland, my circle of friends, or even my immediate family, but has always felt a persistent sense of alienation and a need for solitude in relation to all these ties, a feeling that increases with age. One senses sharply, but without regret, the limits of understanding and harmony with other people” (my emphasis).

8. Walden, Chapter 5, "Solitude" (1854).

9. 獨坐敬亭山

相看兩不厭，只有敬亭山。

8th c. CE, my translation.

10. Letter to Ethel Smyth, September 28, 1930, via

Letters of Note

.

11. Letter to Max Brod, July 9, 1912. Translation from

Letters of Note

.

12. Letter to David Garnett, September 2, 1970, via

Letters of Note

.

13. Letter to Gerald Locklin, August 1981, via

Letters of Note

.

14. “No se puede hacer nada sin la soledad. Me he creado una soledad que nadie sospecha,” June 15, 1932, ABC Diario Ilustrado (Madrid).