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- Herausgeber: Pantera Press
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
'In this powerful meditation on aloneness – as opposed to loneliness – Kerri blends incisive journalism with critical thinking, research, wit and heartfelt storytelling … For those burned out by busyness and connectedness, this book is life-changing' Ginger GormanWhy is it so scary to be alone with your own thoughts?When columnist and commentator Kerri Sackville decided to stop filling every idle moment with distraction and learn to be comfortable alone, her quality of life soared.From boosting creativity and productivity, improving self-awareness, building resilience and moral courage, to improving relationships and connection with others, a bit of alone time is vital to wellbeing. But with smart phones, social media, endless streaming and podcast options, as well as the demands of work, family and friends, spending meaningful time on your own can feel impossible, unnecessary, or even indulgent.In The Secret Life of You Kerri Sackville analyses society's attitude towards solitude – why is it okay to eat breakfast at a café on your own but faintly tragic to dine alone? She identifies the roadblocks in the way to unplugging, contemplates aloneness vs loneliness, and looks at the difference between true connection and mere connectivity. Finally, she provides practical advice on how to become comfortable in your own company, in order to enjoy – and even cherish – time alone.
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Why is it so scary to be alone with your thoughts?
When columnist and commentator Kerri Sackville decided to stop filling every idle moment with distraction and learn to be comfortable alone, her quality of life soared.
From boosting creativity and productivity, improving self-awareness, building resilience and moral courage, to improving relationships and connection with others, a bit of alone time is vital to wellbeing. But with smart phones, social media, endless streaming and podcast options, as well as the demands of work, family and friends, spending meaningful time on your own can feel impossible, unnecessary, or even indulgent.
In The Secret Life of You, Sackville analyses society’s attitude towards solitude, identifies the roadblocks in the way to unplugging, contemplates aloneness Vs loneliness, and looks at the difference between true connection and mere connectivity. Finally, she provides practical advice on how to become comfortable in your own company, in order to enjoy – and even cherish – time alone.
v
In loving memory of my sister Tanya
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
What Does It Mean to Be Alone?
‘You are who you are when nobody’s watching.’
Stephen Fry
Up in the air
I was alone in the middle of a forest, hanging from a zipline fifty metres above the ground. This was not within my comfort zone: I am a suburban mum whose idea of adventure is to get a double shot of coffee in my mocha. Still, I was with my two daughters on holidays in Tasmania, and we had decided to try ziplining for fun. The journey up the mountain had been exhilarating, but when I reached the top, the ride jolted to a halt and I was left dangling alone in mid-air.
This was not fun at all.
I hung there amid the treetops, my kids and the zipline staff shrunken to tiny specks in the distance. Up there in the air, cut off from the world, I suddenly felt profoundly and unspeakably alone. There was just me and the trees and the little gusts of breeze and quite remarkable silence. I could hear my own breath in my ears, incredibly loud, and I realised I was panicking. I instinctively reached for my phone, but, of course, it wasn’t there. It was in my bag at the zipline base, six hundred metres away.
I wanted my phone and I really, desperately, wanted to get down.
I’m not afraid of heights, and I wasn’t afraid of falling; I was very securely strapped in. It was the silence and the solitude that were terrifying. I closed my eyes and I wished for the ride to end. 3When the zipline shuddered and started moving back to base, I actually yelped with relief.
The ride only lasted for a few minutes, but the memory of that existential terror lingered on for weeks. Why, I wondered, did I get so panicked in the air? Why was it so frightening to be alone? I was alone all the time. I was very good at being by myself!
Or, I thought, was I?
For most of my life I had been quite content in my own company. As a child, I was happy to spend hours in my bedroom if I had books to read, paper on which to write and regular access to the fridge to rummage for snacks. As an adult, I chose to be a freelance writer and spent most days at home writing.
On the other hand, I had rarely done anything alone other than work, shop, exercise or drive my car. I’d been in back-to-back relationships since I was seventeen years old. I got married in my twenties and had three kids by my late thirties. I had never lived alone for more than a few weeks or travelled by myself. I had never been to a movie by myself or gone solo to a show; I had never taken myself out for lunch or sat alone at a bar.
Honestly, it had never even occurred to me to do so.
But when I was forty-six, my life changed dramatically. My marriage ended, and I became a single parent. I moved with my kids into my parents’ home, and then, a few weeks later, we moved into our own apartment. For the first couple of weeks in our new home, I was constantly busy and distracted. Life was a frenzy of furniture deliveries and decorating, and eating dinners around our brand-new table. But when my kids had their first sleepover at their dad’s, I reeled with the shock of an empty house. I walked into my living room and looked around, and the entire atmosphere felt different. The air was heavy, the silence 4echoed off the walls, and even the glow from the light fittings seemed duller. I sat on my new couch, completely stunned, and stayed there, unmoving, until it was time for bed. I had no idea what to do with myself. I had no idea how to be alone.
To be fair, I didn’t have a lot of great role models. Very few people around me seemed to spend any meaningful time in their own company. One of my friends, a single mum of two grown kids, frantically socialised every night of the week to avoid having to be on her own. Another female friend spent long hours in the office then came home to a chaotic family of five. Several people in my circle worked fifteen-hour days, leaving no time to reflect on their lives. And, of course, almost everyone I knew carried their phones with them constantly and would check them in every idle moment.
I had friends and acquaintances who were almost permanently online, posting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram from early every morning to late at night. My own teenage daughter was practically glued to her phone, and this seemed normal to me. Sure, sometimes I worried that she was never alone with her thoughts, but I really wasn’t one to judge. I was on my phone or computer in almost every idle moment. I was on social media compulsively, I scrolled mindlessly through Instagram videos and always had a podcast running in the background. I delved into online dating just months after my separation and started innumerable conversations with innumerable men. I was in several group chats and would text and message during the day. Even when I was writing – a job that requires focused concentration – I was incessantly clicking in and out of the apps.
I worked, a lot. I dated, a lot. There was always a man on the scene, someone vaguely inappropriate, someone to ward off the 5terror of being single. I was constantly online. I was constantly distracted. I was, without realising it, running from myself.
And then came Covid. Within weeks, we were in lockdown. My entire frenetic life came to a sudden, screeching halt. The media took a hit and I lost most of my regular writing work. I found myself stuck in an apartment with three kids, no work, no partner and endless days of empty time. My kids were busy in their rooms with their online studies and Zoom chats, and I was isolated, lonely and lost. I couldn’t date. I couldn’t socialise. I couldn’t fill all the hours with social media.
And then I realised I couldn’t outrun my own company. If I was ever to be okay in myself, I had to figure out how to be alone.
What is alone time?
Over the past couple of years, I have spent a lot of time thinking and talking about alone time. But when I talk to other people about the importance of being okay alone, they assume that I am talking about being single. I am not. Plenty of single people are never alone, and plenty of partnered people are alone much of the time. When I say ‘I am alone’ I mean ‘I am alone with my thoughts’. You are alone when you have turned inwards, when you have disconnected from the outside world and connected with yourself. The philosopher Plato offered a very poetic definition of solitude: he wrote that being alone is the condition in which we can think, in which we can hear the silent dialogue ‘which the soul holds with herself’.
Being alone doesn’t necessarily mean being physically separated from other people. We can be alone with our thoughts even when we are surrounded by people. We can sit in an open-plan 6office, or on a crowded beach, and shut out everything around us, turning our attention inwards. Back in the sixteenth century, philosopher Michel de Montaigne referred to this as retreating to the ‘backshop’ of our mind. When we sit in a lecture hall and drift off into daydreams, when we are deep in contemplation on a busy bus ride, when we conduct imaginary conversations in our own heads, we are visiting the backshops of our minds.
We all have a backshop, a secret world filled with thoughts and memories and dreams, but not all of us are willing to pay ours a visit. Many of us refuse to be alone with our thoughts, even when we’re all by ourselves. This is one of the great paradoxes of our modern world: we see the opportunity for solitude as desirable and a great privilege, and yet when we’re offered a bit of solitude, many of us avoid it like the plague.
We all want our own room, our own office, our own car, our own nook in the house. We all want the right to privacy and to space. Most of us want some time in the day to be left alone, away from friends and family and the world. If we are parents, we long for some moments away from the kids, and breathe a sigh of relief when they’re asleep. If we are partnered, we fantasise on occasion about having our own beds, or even our own rooms. (In fact, having your own bedroom is one of the few recognised privileges of the single, as well as the ability to lie splayed out in the middle of the bed.)
And yet so many of us who are lucky enough to have time alone don’t use that time to connect with ourselves. Instead, we message a friend, or we blast a podcast, or we play Candy Crush for an hour. There are endless distractions to keep us from the secret world of our minds, thanks to the marvels of modern 7technology. We can be alone and immersed in Netflix, or alone and chatting to strangers on the internet. We can be alone and scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, or alone and playing online games. We can be physically alone and never be alone with our thoughts. We can avoid ourselves for our entire lives.
Back when we were cave-dwellers
It is, of course, perfectly reasonable to want to seek out connection. We are social creatures built for co-operation and relationships. Back in cave-dweller times, we humans needed to stick close to our tribes, because wandering too far could get us lost in the wilderness or becoming a snack for a lion. Later, as humans evolved, we developed complex societies in which it became almost impossible to be self-sufficient. We’ve all heard stories about fiercely independent people who go off-grid and live by themselves in the bush. And they’re admirable – I mean, I can’t light a fire, let alone hunt for my own food – but they’re rarely truly independent. Sure, they might grow their own veggies, make their own clothes and even build their own home from found materials. But they will rely on other people for almost everything else: to weave the cotton for their shirts, to manufacture the tools they’ll use to build their walls, to write the books and manuals they will read.
On a psychological level, we humans are programmed to desire love and care, which leaves us highly susceptible to the fear of solitude. And to find that love and care, we work hard to seek connections. We might do our best to cultivate many friendships or to find that one special friend who truly understands us. We might spend a great deal of time in search 8of a romantic partner or strive to connect very deeply with the partner we have. We might feel uncomfortable travelling away from our loved ones or to be in our own homes by ourselves for extended periods of time.
Of course, we might not consciously fear solitude; we might simply choose never to be alone with our thoughts. After all, we have our partners or our friends or our family or our flatmates, and if they’re not around we can find company online. No-one needs to be truly alone these days, not with our mobile devices keeping us connected twenty-four seven. We can spend our entire lives cleverly dodging solitude, so why do any of us need to learn to be alone?
This is an excellent question with many answers. We need alone time because we can never know ourselves if we are never willing to be in our own company. We need it for our emotional wellbeing, for the sake of our relationships, and for our ability to live fully. We need it if we want to have an original thought, or to be creative, or to work to our potential. We need it to build our moral courage, to develop a social conscience, and to figure out right from wrong.
Perhaps most importantly – and paradoxically – we need alone time to help us ward off loneliness. We cannot connect fully and deeply with any other person if we have not yet connected with ourselves. We all want to be loved for who we truly are, but if we don’t know who we are, how can we possibly feel known?
But humans aren’t meant to be alone!
It’s true that humans aren’t supposed to be always alone. Having said that, we are not supposed to be never alone, either. And until 9relatively recently, we humans spent regular periods of time by ourselves, if not physically then in the secret world of our minds.
Before technology and the advent of social media, casual moments of solitude were a normal part of life. There were no podcasts about growing crops to keep a seventeenth-century peasant entertained as she tended to the fields. There were no smartphones with which an eighteenth-century gentleman could browse Instagram for cat pics as he sat in his horse-drawn carriage. If a maid in the nineteenth century was not engaged in conversation with another member of the household nor reading a book, she had no choice but to be alone with her thoughts.
Alone time has played a significant role in human history and human achievement. Solo contemplation has long been linked to spiritual enlightenment, and there is a tale of solitude-induced revelation for almost every religious persuasion. Moses spent forty days alone on a mountain. Jesus spent forty days alone in the desert. Muhammad spent a month alone in a cave. Buddha spent seven weeks alone under a tree.
For those of us who aren’t especially religious, it is interesting to note that alone time has always been considered fundamental to creativity. (For proof, just refer to one of the 17 billion poems written about solitude.) There are innumerable examples of philosophers, writers, artists, musicians, inventors and thinkers who have embraced solitude as part of their creative process, from Darwin to Picasso, Tchaikovsky to Shakespeare, Nietzsche to Newton, and, more recently, Steve Wozniak to Barack Obama. (Obama, a famous introvert, claims to do his best work in solitude. Prior to his nomination as presidential candidate, he reportedly spent three days by himself in a hotel working on his 10acceptance speech. As president of the United States, he insisted on four to five hours of alone time every evening, when he would read, write and think without distractions.)
As a society, we have always been fascinated by extreme examples of solitude, perhaps because they tickle our own dark fears. We devour books and movies about solo travels, hikes, sailing trips, mountain climbs, flights and explorations. (I will never forget reading about Jessica Watson sailing solo around the world, or Aron Ralston surviving a solo canyoning disaster by hacking off his right arm.) If you happen to get lost alone in the snow, wilderness or at sea, you are virtually guaranteed a bestselling memoir, followed by a blockbuster movie.
But while we’re intrigued by people who trek solo through a desert or survive a year at sea, we are far less interested in what average people do in their everyday time alone. Only recently have psychologists begun studying the benefits of solitude, though philosophers have been discussing it since Plato’s time. Paediatrician Donald Winnicott wrote about the importance of solitude in a groundbreaking 1958 article, ‘The capacity to be alone’.1 He believed that the ability to spend time on our own is a sign of emotional maturity and that it arises from an early secure attachment to a caregiver. Thirty years later, psychologist Anthony Storr wrote Solitude: A return to the self, in which he argued that alone time is essential for creative genius and can be a source of as much fulfilment and happiness as relationships.2
Though I am no creative genius, I am interested in happiness, and, shortly after lockdown began, I decided to test his theory for myself.11
All by myself
I resolved to be alone without any distractions. I put down my phone for long periods of time. I stopped trying to fill the empty space and just spent time with myself. It was hard. It was really hard. I was scared and agitated and lonely and anxious. Every cell in my body cried out for distraction. I wanted to scroll through Instagram, swipe through Tinder, message a group chat, post on Twitter, cry over a video of a solider reuniting with his kids.
But I didn’t. I didn’t numb myself. I didn’t run from my own company. I turned to myself as if I were a friend, a confidante, a person with whom I could engage. I went for walks on my own, without my phone. I sat on the couch without watching TV. I lay on the grass in the park and stared at the sky. I pottered around my home without earphones, listening to my own thoughts instead of the radio or a podcast. When lockdown ended, I went to the coast by myself and spent three days in a house reading and writing and speaking to no-one.
I began to notice the changes in myself. The frantic urge to swipe and post and comment was easing. I thought a lot about what would make me happy and rediscovered activities I’d previously enjoyed. I returned to reading fiction. I took up knitting and spent many happy hours gazing lovingly at balls of yarn. I fixed up all the odds and ends in my house that I’d neglected for years and bought a couple of new little items that brought me pleasure every day.
I did not magically become a perfect human being. I still occasionally lost my temper at the kids, wasted time looking at Instagram videos when I was tired, and thought uncharitable things about particularly irritating people. I did, however, 12became less judgemental and more self-aware, and calmer and less reactive. I was more present with my family and enjoyed social media more when using it sparingly and mindfully. I found myself more keenly appreciating the company of my friends, since I was happier in my own company. And I needed less approval and validation from others as I focused instead on becoming proud of myself.
My creativity soared following a long period of feeling uninspired. I finally bought myself a new laptop after years of using one that was missing several keys. I interviewed scores of people about their attitudes towards solitude. I started writing this book and couldn’t jot down my thoughts fast enough.
The secret life of you
The Secret Life of You explains the reasons why so many of us avoid being alone and outlines the life-changing benefits of learning to be comfortable in your own company.
Most importantly, it will show you, step by step, how to increase your tolerance of true, meaningful alone time. Loneliness is a huge problem in our society, but the cure for loneliness isn’t company: you can be with other people and still feel profoundly lonely. The cure for loneliness is connection. And to connect deeply with another person, you first need to connect with yourself.
Life is constantly changing. You might live in several homes, have a variety of jobs, be part of many different communities. Acquaintances will come and go, friendships will change over the years, and even your most central, significant relationships will shift over time. There is only one absolute guarantee in your life and that is your continued presence in it. The more 13comfortable you are in your own company, the more solid the foundations for your life.
I hope you enjoy this book and learn to value time alone. Because the centre of your life is you. It can only be you! You have a whole secret world inside of you that is worth getting to know.
PART 1
Why Are So Many People Never Truly Alone?
CHAPTER 1
Society
‘Solitude is certainly a fine thing; but there is pleasure in having someone who can answer, from time to time, that it is a fine thing.’
Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac
The rules of solitude
I dislike the word ‘journey’. If it’s not a trip that takes you from one physical location to another then I’d rather not call it a journey. So let me just say this: during my process of learning to feel comfortable in myself, I wanted to figure out why being alone was so challenging in the first place. As a starting point, I needed to look at our culture. We are all the product of our personalities and our upbringings, but we are also the product of our social environment. And our society has extremely specific norms around how we should spend time on our own.
Even as children we learn that solitude is acceptable only in clearly defined circumstances. We internalise the rules of solitude as we internalise other cultural norms: we are never explicitly told what they are, but we know exactly what is acceptable and what is not.
For example, we know that it is fine to be alone at the end of a long, exhausting day spent dealing with people, but it is not fine to spend a Saturday night on your own when most people are out on the town.
We know that it is very pleasant to eat breakfast alone at a café while we read the news, but to eat dinner by yourself at a restaurant is embarrassing and sad. 19
We know that it is sensible to be single for a while after the break-up of a long relationship, but it is unfortunate – and even a little tragic – to remain single for several years.
We know that backpacking solo through Europe is adventurous and exciting, but spending a month in a cabin on your own in the woods is odd and borderline alarming.
We know that we should be delighted if our child entertains herself for half an hour while we’re busy in the kitchen, but if our child consistently chooses to play by herself instead of playing with other kids, we should be gravely concerned about her social development.
To summarise: alone time is acceptable in small doses, but being in company is normal, the default, and the ideal.
The extrovert ideal
One of the reasons our society devalues alone time is that we are strongly biased towards extroversion. Author Susan Cain dubbed this the ‘extrovert ideal’ in her book about introversion, Quiet.1 Our culture, she argues, values assertiveness over thoughtfulness, socialising over introspection, and collaboration over individual work. People with big personalities get far more attention and have greater social currency than those who are more understated. If you’re an extrovert, you probably don’t notice the extrovert bias as we are raised to see extroversion as natural and normal. The bias is, however, extremely obvious to introverts, who are constantly being schooled on how to be more social and outgoing. Try searching ‘how to be outgoing’ and you’ll get about 250 million hits, with articles like ‘Four ways to be more outgoing’, ‘How to be more social as an introvert’ and ‘Seven tips 20to trick yourself into being more outgoing’. Try searching ‘how to be more introverted’ and you still get the articles on how to be outgoing.
In our extroverted society, we are trained to focus our attention and energy outward towards other people instead of inwards towards ourselves; our culture is intensely preoccupied with social interactions and the relationships between people. We are taught from childhood that love makes the world go round, that family and friendship are paramount, and that the most important thing you can achieve in life is to love and be loved in return. And when we judge people’s characters, we focus primarily on how deeply they are loved by others.
Sure, there are indicators of status in our culture that we take very seriously. We are impressed by intelligence, high achievement, power, beauty, fame and, of course, wealth. But when we place a moral value on another human being – when we decide whether they are a good and decent person – we focus almost entirely on their relationships. We consider how many friends they have, whether they are close with their family, and what they have done for other people. In my own Jewish community, a good person is a ‘mensch’, someone who is compassionate and generous and kind. In the wider community, a good person is a ‘family man’, or ‘devoted to her community’, or ‘selfless’ or ‘popular’.
Love is the greatest currency we have. Being loved by another person proves our worth to the world, which is why I always asked potential romantic partners to tell me about their friends, and why politicians parade their devoted families before the media. And this makes sense. We live in a communal society. We are all co-dependent. We need to get along! Of course we should 21value people who are loving and loved, and who keep the wheels of society nicely greased.
But the flip side of this intense focus on relationships is a distrust of people who like spending time alone. A person who ‘keeps to himself’ or doesn’t have a social network is considered strange, or a bit sad, or genuinely scary. ‘What is wrong with him?’ we wonder. ‘Why doesn’t he have any friends?’ It doesn’t occur to us that he might be comfortable in his own company. It doesn’t occur to us that his solitude may be freely chosen.
In our modern world, we are deeply suspicious of people who spend lots of time by themselves. We simply don’t believe that they can genuinely be happy. We consider relationships to be the main source of pleasure, joy and fulfilment, above work, above hobbies, above passions, above ourselves. This wasn’t always the case. Back in the nineteenth century, poets, writers and artists would retreat into solitude to focus on their craft for months, even years, and they would be respected for their choice and admired for their sacrifice. (The celebrated poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, for example, famously lived alone in a cabin in the woods in Massachusetts for over two years.) These days, however, we’d regard the same people with mistrust and pity. ‘You want to be all by yourself?’ we ask with incredulity. ‘For six months? Are you okay?’
Matthew H. Bowker, a political theorist who has studied solitude, believes that we are threatened by people who enjoy solitude because we perceive their aloneness as a rejection of our company.2 If a person can reject us then they mustn’t care about us, and if they don’t care about us then they might be prepared to harm us. We don’t think of a ‘loner’ as a person with a rich inner life; we think of them as a terrorist, or a serial killer, 22or a potential school shooter. We don’t see their solitariness as a positive choice; we see it only as a withdrawal from society. We move straight from ‘spends a lot of time alone’ to ‘definitely abnormal’, ‘probably a deviant’ and ‘possibly a murderer’.
Our suspicion of ‘loners’ arises in part from the way we categorise others and ourselves. We like to believe that we are individuals, but we align ourselves with subgroups of society. We classify ourselves and other people according to ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, country and town of origin, religion, socioeconomic group, political beliefs, alma mater, profession, even generation.
‘We’re drawn to identity-markers and to groups that help define us or “fill us up”, if you will,’ says Bowker. ‘In the simplest terms, this means using others to fill out our identities, rather than relying on something internal, something that comes from within.’3
Without those identity-markers to ground us and help us to understand who we are, we can feel lost and frightened and unmoored. If I am not thinking of myself as a parent, or a writer, or a daughter, or a friend, or a gen Xer, or an Australian, who even am I? If I am alone and I cannot see myself in counterpoint to other people, do I even exist?
All you need is love
One of our most pervasive cultural rules is that it is not okay to be single for very long. We consider friends and family to be intensely important, but the most significant connection we can have in life is a romantic relationship. Being coupled up is the norm in our society, and to be single is to be an outlier. I know 23this because in my post-divorce life I was constantly asked why I was single, and in my seventeen years of married life I was never once asked why I was partnered.
Our culture equates living happily ever after with finding somebody to love. ‘All you need is love,’ we are told, but not just any old love: we need a soulmate, our other half, that special person who will complete us. There is a romantic subplot in pretty much every movie we watch, every novel we read, and every fairytale we were told as kids. Popular culture is obsessed with the romantic lives of celebrities, and every new relationship, wedding, break-up and pregnancy is scrutinised and documented in exhaustive detail.
With such a focus on romantic love, there is pervasive social pressure on all of us to couple up and a serious bias against being single. When being half of a couple is the norm, singledom is regarded as a sort of failure to thrive: if you don’t hit that particular target, you haven’t lived fully. Being single is so undesirable in our culture that people feel free to comment pityingly, even derisively, on a single person’s status. ‘How can someone like you be single?’ a stranger will muse. ‘Don’t worry, it will happen soon.’
And although both men and women experience single-shaming, the stigma is far greater for women. An unmarried man is a bachelor, a term so appealing it is the name of a television show. Women love The Bachelor. They line up to date him! There’s nothing sad about him at all. But no man is lining up to date The Spinster. The term for an unmarried woman is so derogatory, so pathetic, that reality TV opted for The Bachelorette to avoid the negative connotations.
Single women definitely experience more pity and derision than single men, but it is just as socially unacceptable for a 24man to be single forever. Men, like women, are supposed to be coupled up; the only difference is in their expiry date. A man is still considered to be marriageable right into his forties, fifties and even beyond, whereas a single woman is on the clock, and everybody knows it. Her attractiveness is considered to crash in her late thirties, so she needs to get hitched quickly before the umpire calls time. What’s more, her fertility will tank in her early forties, so she needs to urgently find herself a partner to give her children, who in turn will ward off the loneliness of old age.
Our fixation on marriage as the pinnacle of happiness taints our perception of single people, and particularly of single women. A woman can be smart and attractive and confident and cheerful, but if she is single, she is also a little pitiful and sad. Her relationship status is her defining quality, above career, above family, above friends, above all else. I couldn’t count the number of times an acquaintance has asked about my love-life before they ask me about my work or even my kids. ‘So are you seeing anyone?’ they’ll ask, and look sympathetic if I say no. No matter what women do or achieve, no matter how fulfilled we consider ourselves to be, the world will always notice before anything else the giant, flashing absence of a partner.
So many women have internalised this bias. In 2018, British writer Avivah Wittenberg-Cox described her terror of ending up ‘alone, over fifty and lonely’ when she left her marriage of twenty-two years. To escape that dark fate, Wittenberg-Cox looked around for a new partner before leaving her husband, eventually settling on an old friend. ‘“Tim!” I thought to myself. “Of course, Tim!” I was suddenly speechless … I wouldn’t have to go trawling the internet or wandering around singles’ bars. I wouldn’t have to go live alone to prove I was a modern woman 25and could be entirely self-sufficient. Right here in front of me was a fine specimen of a man.’4
To Wittenberg-Cox – and to so many others – being single and ‘self-sufficient’ was utterly terrifying. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that she could be ‘alone, over fifty and content’, nor to celebrate the opportunity to be an independent woman. It also doesn’t seem to have occurred to her to figure out her own needs and desires, nor to spend time in her own company. And why would it when every message she had received from society taught her that redemption lies solely in romantic love?
No wonder people are anxious about being on their own in this sort of cultural context. It is tricky to uncouple (see what I did there?) the stigma of being unpartnered from the actual lived experience. How can you decide whether you genuinely want a partner or you just want to rid yourself of the ignominy of being single?
Don’t go it alone
There is a cultural bias against being alone, but there is an equally strong bias against doing things alone. We dine out with friends, we go to the theatre with a partner, we even exercise in groups. And this goes further than just a preference to share the joy: many people feel a reluctance – if not an actual fear – of doing things by themselves. Studies have shown that both men and women prefer to skip a recreational activity rather than doing it solo, and I see plenty of evidence of this in my daily life.5
‘I want to do a pottery class, but I can’t find anyone to go with me,’ a friend will say.
‘I was dying to see that movie, but John didn’t want to go,’ says another. 26
‘Please come with me to yoga!’ asks a third. ‘I can’t go on my own.’
Of course, there are certain activities we can’t do alone – play tennis, for example, or go ballroom dancing. But why are so many people so reluctant to see a film or have a meal or take a class all by themselves?
The reason, most people will answer, is that they don’t enjoy an experience as much if they can’t share it with someone. But what is ‘sharing’? Is it just sitting next to another person and debriefing with them after the activity is over? We can’t outsource our five senses to another person, or merge consciousness with them so that we can truly ‘share’ an experience. When we are doing yoga, it is our body performing the poses. When we are watching a movie, it is our ears and eyes that are taking in the content. When we are eating a meal, it is our tastebuds that are processing the food. (And if it’s great food, I’d rather not share it at all.)
Being in company doesn’t make a meal taste better or the plot of a movie more compelling or a yoga pose more graceful. Having said that, shame can detract from the pleasure of a meal, or the enjoyment of an event or class. And there can certainly be shame in doing things on our own because of the bias against solitude in our culture. So does sharing genuinely enhance our enjoyment of an activity or does it simply rid us of the awkwardness and shame of doing something on our own?
Perhaps there is a parallel universe in which it is normal to do things alone and slightly embarrassing to take a companion to the movies. But in our actual universe, solitude is devalued to the point of being weaponised. Prisoners who misbehave are subjected to solitary confinement. Children who act up are sent 27to their rooms. Exclusion and ostracism are common forms of bullying in the workplace and in schools.
With all the negative connotations around being alone, we construct solitude as something to be endured, not embraced. It is a punishment, not a reward. If a person can tolerate long periods on their own, we figure they must be extremely resilient. If a person chooses to spend long periods of time on their own, we figure they must be a little bit mad. Entire movies are built around the theme of surviving solitude – think of Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Matt Damon in The Martian or Robert Redford in All Is Lost. We think of real-life solo adventurers as brave and perhaps a little unhinged. We don’t wave them off saying, ‘Enjoy, you lucky thing – five months alone at sea!’ We wish them luck and godspeed and tell them to be strong. Because if they don’t stay strong, they could go insane. They could end up like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, driven to homicidal mania after a couple of months in a deserted hotel, or Tom Hanks in Cast Away, sobbing over a blood-smeared ball (poor bloody Wilson).
As a result of all this bias, it can be uncomfortable for those who do enjoy solitude to admit this to the world. In the long lockdowns during the pandemic, as the media teemed with stories about people struggling with isolation, it seemed almost treasonous to admit to being happy. There were plenty of people who enjoyed lockdown, and plenty more who weren’t fussed by the solitude, but their stories were largely ignored.
‘I’m loving it,’ my friend Emma told me over the phone. ‘I get to stay at home on the couch and not have to see anyone. I don’t want it to end.’
‘I like doing uni online,’ said Ali, a twenty-year-old law student. ‘I like staying in my PJs all day and hanging with the dog.’ 28
‘It’s great, I’m getting heaps of work done,’ texted Jeff, a forty-something with a teenage son. ‘I don’t miss going out at all.’
Still, no-one wanted to hear from the Emmas, Alis or Jeffs of the world, padding cheerfully around their homes, relishing the peace and quiet. No-one wanted to hear from those delighted to be free of the pressure to get out and be social. It didn’t fit into the cultural narrative of solitude as unpleasant and stressful. It was best for those people who did enjoy lockdown to keep their contentment to themselves.
Do something!
Our modern society has a severe (and severely unhelpful) bias against doing nothing. We all flaunt our busyness like a badge of honour, constantly trying to prove just how much we have to do. Being busy means that we are important and needed, and so we compete with our friends over whose life is the most frantic. ‘I’m flat out,’ we tell each other, or ‘I’ve got so much on!’, or ‘Things are crazy right now!’ None of us wants to admit that we have time to do nothing. We don’t even want to admit it to ourselves.
When we do take time off it is structured and formalised, to make the most of every minute of the day. We do yoga, or we meditate, or we go on retreats, or we play golf, or we engage in an improving hobby. We read the latest novel, or we watch the must-see Netflix show, or we listen to the viral podcast. What we don’t do very often is lie on the couch and daydream or go for a stroll and get lost in our thoughts. What we don’t do very often is nothing at all, or even one thing at a time.
‘To do one thing at a time makes me anxious,’ said Ariela. ‘If I’m driving, I need news, a podcast or an audiobook. If I’m 29cooking or doing laundry or housework, I need the same thing. I get anxious that I’m not using my time in the best possible way if I don’t pair tasks with news and culture input.’
Even during a pandemic-induced lockdown, there was relentless pressure on us all to be busy and to make the most of our time. People posted on social media about their homemade sourdough, spring cleans, creative projects, side hustles, and new and exciting exercise regimes. It felt incredibly unfair to me. Surely it was enough just to survive a catastrophic global pandemic? Did we all have to be productive as well?
The bias against doing nothing is particularly strong for women, especially mothers of young children. Media personality and mother of two Sally Obermeder experienced this firsthand when she posted about taking a twenty-four-hour mini-break alone in a hotel late in 2021.
‘My DMs went crazy,’ she told me. ‘I had thousands of replies from women saying, “Oh my god I need this,” but people asked me not to share their comments.’
‘Why would they not want their comments shared?’ I asked.
‘People said, “It sounds amazing, and I want to do that, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think I want to do that,”’ Sally said. ‘I think there’s an element of martyrdom, a pressure in society to be what we feel like is the perfect mum. And the perfect mum is always on, so there’s a perception that if you have this time to yourself, you’re selfish.’
‘Do you think men struggle with taking time out for themselves?’ I asked, but I knew the answer. Every father I know goes off to play golf for a day, or has a boys’ night out, or goes to the footy without any sense of guilt or shame. 30
‘When [my husband] Marcus is away, he might ring and say I miss you,’ Sally told me, ‘but he never says he feels guilty. His mates don’t say, “If only I could do that.” It’s collectively a female thing.’
Taking time out to do nothing is never actually doing nothing. Sure, you can squander your days by spending hours on Candy Crush or watching cat videos on repeat. But actually doing nothing – which very few people do – is no more a waste of time than meeting a friend is a waste of time. It is connecting with yourself instead of connecting with another person. As Sally explained to her young daughters, ‘It’s the same as a playdate, it’s just a playdate by myself.’
Doing nothing is processing. Doing nothing is daydreaming. Doing nothing is spending time in the secret world of your mind.
