Solitude, Silence and the Threat of Loneliness
Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.
Paul Tillich
A quiet room or space that doesn’t require you to respond, react or do anything at all is an appealing option after a busy day.
After a day of constant connection …
- getting the kids ready for school
- checking email
- navigating relationships in the workplace
- running errands
- checking email
- answering voicemail
- Twitter and Facebook
- checking email
- getting dinner on the table
- watching the news
- checking email
… we crave solitude but fear loneliness. If we spend time alone, will we still be loved? relevant? connected?
And what if at the heart of all of this connection is complete disconnection. Emptiness and loneliness aren’t always recognized in a busy day or busy life, but it’s there. There is greater chance for true, genuine connection if you allow yourself a little silence, time to putter, and space to be quiet.
Better connect by disconnecting
Unplug. Start with an hour and then aim for a day a week. No computer, iPad or email. Your brain needs a break.
Media fast. Challenge yourself to a week away from the news and other media. You’ll be surprised how much better you sleep with a week away from drama, advertising and heightened anxiety.
Be a good friend. Let your friends, especially your draining, negative friends know that you are taking a week off. Tell them you need a little time for yourself and you’ll check in after a set amount of time. Use that time to evaluate your friendships and take steps to spend time with people that lift you up more often than they drag you down.
Start with silence. Instead of squeezing in quiet time, start your day with 5 minutes all to yourself. Give yourself that gift, so you can give more freely during the day.
Struggling with loneliness is more and more common in the digital age. We miss deep connection, quiet time and space to think and breathe slowly. Maybe your lonely is a subtle, nagging feeling or perhaps more evident. Either way, accept it and move through it. The world needs you and your wonderful gifts.
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P.S. A few months ago, I asked your for some feedback about redesigning Be More with Less. The response was amazing and the message was clear. Aside from a few specific recommendations you said, “Keep it Simple” “Keep doing what you do” “Don’t make things distracting”. I followed your advice and …
- removed almost everything from the sidebar
- cleaned up the navigation bar to offer fewer choices
- made the archives page easier to search by keyword, category or month
- added an e-goodness page so you can see the e-courses and other projects I’ve developed in one easy to find place
10 Responses to “Solitude, Silence and the Threat of Loneliness”
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Thanks Courtney for the tips and encouragement you put into your post, I’m sure many will find it helpful to step onto the island of solitude even for 5 minutes…
As a writer, I often crave solitude in our crazy world. It helps me recharge my creativity. Oddly enough, I feel more connected if I make time for silence and contemplation–connected to my inner voice, but also to nature, people, and the world around me.
Sadly, not everyone feels this way. Recently, a friend remarked that she doesn’t feel her actions have any value unless someone is around to see her contribution. Her words saddened me. I can’t imagine my only value coming from others’ words and not from within myself. We need both others and ourselves to feel whole. Thanks for the post!
Yesterday I took (almost) the whole day off from media. Other than a little time in the morning and some right at the end of the day, I was off email, FB, our blog, the whole shebang. Felt awesome. Highly recommend disconnecting.
I love solitude and silence! I find it so nourishing. But still, feelings of loneliness can come up! It’s good to learn to be comfortable with space. I’m sure this will be a valuable course.
I really appreciated this article as its been something I’ve been dealing with the last few days.
While I was reading this post, my email was open in the other window. When I returned to it, gmail informed me that “three people unfriended you!” Before I realized that these were imaginary friends in an online system that I rarely bother to check or utilize in any way, there was that initial moment of, ‘Oh no, what did I do?’. I felt it oddly appropriate to the subject matter of this post – unplugging from some of the redundant ‘social media’ and over-filled friend lists of people we hardly remember meeting is a perfectly valid simplification on those people’s parts, and my reaction is perhaps an indication of a bit of needed unplugging on mine.
A great reminder to regularly (even if it is in short bursts) disconnect from the wider digital world and to build contentment by spending time alone.
Your post got me thinking: we should make time for quiet for ourselves and should encourage those around us to do so to.
Courtney, I love how you titled one of the sections “Be a Good Friend” and mentioned how sometimes you have to spend more time with people who lift you up. I think we all worry that we will make other people feel bad but don’t take the time to ask if we feel bad by being around someone.
In addition to evaluating friendships, I would add that family members are not exempt!
Courtney… I am a bit astonished that this gem has sat in my Google Reader all week. And at the same time I am oh so very grateful it has. I have been dancing with that thing called loneliness, sometimes, and then magically discovering it is solitude. Tillich’s quote clarifies the sometimes invisible line BEtween the two.
I have deliberately, over these past 3 years, unplugged, disconnected, and gone without that which, at times, seemed like it has ALWAYS needed to BE “had” to some degree. My latest Let Go was my car, 6 months ago.
Sometimes I don’t know the latest news, and sometimes, NOT getting to my Reader for a few days yields me a V-8 head slap of the exquisite variety.
I spent much of the past 3 days “out in the World” riding the bus and in places with lots of people. They were, by and large, all angry and edgy, throwing all that wherever was handy for them. And I came home each day covered in it. Long showers seemed to wash it away and then BAM!!! back it all came in an odd interaction or unreturned phone call.
Life can BE a bit of a relay race at times, and it really REALLY is hard to BE the one who goes last and is depended upon to make up lost time… MayBE that doesn’t make sense… oh well.
Thank you for always giving me good thoughts to think on and and wisdom that is deep and delicious.