The Power of Solitude

Last updated on: August 30, 2011 at 10:44 am by Christy Thomas

The Power of Solitude 2011-08-30T10:44:49-05:00 Christy Thomas

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I just finished reading a musing on the necessity of disconnecting ourselves from the social network in order to reconnect with our inmost selves. I found myself resonating with nearly every word written. Although I did not backpack around Europe as a young adult, as did the author of that piece, I did leave home and move across the country as a young woman, very much on my own and engaging in that often painful journey to self-discovery.

The aloneness of that journey helped to shape me in so many ways. I made a lot of major mistakes, and learned volumes from the messy aftermath of those mistakes. I got to find out what I was made of, and what resources I had to develop if I were to become a real, functioning adult.

I sent my sons off on those similar journeys–overseas or, like mine, still in the US but far, far away. It was hard to see them off, and I know it was hard for my parents to see me off, but what gifts to them and to me. To have to be alone in a strange place and figure out life.

But now, as the author of that piece reminds us, that solitary journey has become a thing of the past. We’re always connected. Leaving home without our cell phones, even for just a few minutes, now invokes a feeling of panic. What will we do if we can’t reach out and touch someone instantly? What if we need help? What if, even worse, we get lonely?

The author of this article speaks with both humor and pathos of trying to order a baguette in a Paris bakery, and walking away without one because he was unable to speak the French sentence properly. Several years ago, I was in the French countryside, having awoken early and deciding to treat the family to freshly baked croissants for breakfast. I left that three hundred year old hunting lodge where we were staying at 6:30 a.m. to walk a mile to the village so I could be there when the bakery opened. It had snowed the night before, just a light dusting, and the many tulips by the side of the road looked like fields of brides with their white veils crowning the red blooms. The silence and the aloneness were my companions.

When I got to the bakery, just opening, I got in line and began to practice in my own truly awful French my order of six croissants. I reached the counter, mumbled something not even remotely accurate, and was lucky that the counter help was willing to interpret what I needed. I remember being deeply embarrassed by my lack of language facility. I also remember the overwhelming gustatory pleasure of biting into that light, flaky perfectly baked bread, knowing I would never be able to eat a store-bought croissant again.

As I began the uphill mile return walk, the church-bells rang, summoning people to early mass. I was utterly alone, and completely connected. In that hour of joyous solitude, I experienced fullness.

And that is what is lost by constant connectedness. To be texting or speaking of the experience as I was in the midst of it would have been to lose its power. Instead, it went undiluted to the center of my memory, to be brought out and savored and re-experienced as I wished. Some things can only happen when we are totally alone.

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