How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
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Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#2All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Blaise Pascal
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#3All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Blaise Pascal
People have become so incredibly needy of others approval and attention that some of us don't even function properly when being alone.
This makes us incredibly week as well, totally dependent on others to feel good.
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#4Boy, HN loves articles about solitude and loneliness. And it's a distinction that often crops up in discussion here.
I think there's a balance here, and cultivating some amount of loneliness -- not solitude -- is also good. For example, two people in my life are "Alice" and "Bob", who have been married for decades. Alice once told me that one of Bob's great weaknesses was that he'd been alone for too long in his teens and 20s. This had benefits: Bob's social needs are low to non-existent, and while he has loving family and friends, he enjoys sustained solitude. For example, weeks of overseas travel where nobody knows him and he doesn't talk much are great fun for him.
The downside was that he got too used to this. Engaging with other people is messy and hard to control. If you don't have that gnawing bit inside that's hungry for attention and connection, it's easy to decide all that mess isn't worth it. That can hurt people who need those connections more, as they may feel themselves weak or pathetic by comparison. Relationships with other people can become strained if you are at least approximately self-sufficient.
Briefly, my point is most people need (or at least want) to be needed. Somebody who's truly content with solitude isn't going to put that need out there, so relationships with such a person might be more difficult. Of course, too much need is another problem. But a little need seems good.
(This point is pretty tailored to the HN community, which appears to have a lot of stoicism and solitude devotees. I like both too, but I think the point above is worth remembering. The mutual exchange of vulnerabilities is an important component of close friendships.)
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#5All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Blaise Pascal
People have become so incredibly needy of others approval and attention that some of us don't even function properly when being alone. This makes us incredibly week as well, totally dependent on others to feel good.
Some people. Those of us who are quite happy to be alone, or even prefer it, cannot be noticed or included in these statements (by definition).
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#6saw this video recently by a contemporary indian thinker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfwqx7MaPog
liked its open ended invitation to investigate 'life' and what it is to be alone in our body.
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#7I actually think the author is really smart to point out boredom as an ingredient in the mix. I’m friends with a pretty successful writer who told me a couple of months ago how hard it was to get bored in the modern world, and yet, if you aren’t kind of bored, it is very hard to access the full extent of your imagination to come up with ideas that no one else would.
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#8saw this video recently by a contemporary indian thinker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfwqx7MaPog liked its open ended invitation to investigate 'life' and what it is to be alone in our body.
Just watched that yesterday, sounds like a mix of philosophies, stoicism and being authentic
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#9Boy, HN loves articles about solitude and loneliness. And it's a distinction that often crops up in discussion here. I think there's a balance here, and cultivating some amount of loneliness -- not solitude -- is also good. For example, two people in my life are "Alice" and "Bob", who have been married for decades. Alice once told me that one of Bob's great weaknesses was that he'd been alone for too long in his teen…
That's certainly been my experience. Relationships and friendships tend to fall apart if one of them is emotionally self-sufficient. The core relationship-driver of emotional neediness and desire that's apparently the natural state for many appears to be both the glue that binds and the carrot to actually bother building relationships in the first place.
Re: How to be alone: the difference between loneliness and solitude
#10I enjoy solitude because I've always had this fear of being a burden to someone else. I take pride in my self sufficiency because of this - I seek to be a provider, not a consumer.
Though more recently I've started to see this behavior as a defense mechanism against predatory people. I've been an observer of many dinner table conversations among rent-seeking types, which slowly erodes away my faith in people (the current commander-in-chief of the US is the perfect physical manifestation of this type of thinking - the "I was here first so now I can extract wealth from society" mentality. And it works, because people are eager to pay for luxury real estate)
But I digress. And digression is a consequence of solitude since you are not frequently bouncing ideas between other people. It can become a self imposed echo chamber, rationalizing things the way you want without a reality check.
As pessimistic as I sound, I know that there are many pure, selfless people in the world. Lots of them have YouTube channels that I'll check up on every few weeks. I want to find more of them and shower them with resources.
Apologies for the stream of consciousness format. Apparently I'm leaning more towards loneliness than solitude at the moment, and this article is a prompt to share something outside of my own head.