On Solitude

I only really feel like myself after an extended period of solitary, non-judgemental isolation. 

It’s invigorating to take a step back from the (often handed down) ideas of who you’re supposed to be — what you ought to be doing with your time, who you’re meant to be doing it with, and the things and people you’d do best to avoid in the process — to observe who you actually are underneath it all. And, all my great ideas… 

And every positive life altering decision I’ve ever made… 

Have so far all occurred to me during an extended period of quiet solitude with no specific goal in mind. And when I say extended I mean extended. Ideally around 8 hours a day unless work and personal affairs make that impossible. But life lived this way frequently does feel impossible to the point where I wonder if it might be incompatible with like being emotionally available for romantic partners, family, and friends. It can feel selfish to prioritize your inner needs like this, no matter how spent and spiritually drained you may feel in the moment you decide you need to do it. Moreover, even with a clear, sky blue (non) schedule, it’s still impossible for me commit to this practice knowing the good it does, if I go into it with any specific idea of how that time should be spent. Even something as seemingly innocuous as wanting to count my breath can throw me off and turn the whole process into an intolerable torture. Still it’s magical when I can find the right “ignore all expectations” groove because it’s almost as if in deciding to do nothing and be nothing, I call life’s bluff and force it to reveal who I actually am and who I would choose to be if no one was looking and I had nothing to prove to myself.

Don Hertzfeldt is an award winning independent animator who makes movies I like. I’m choosing to believe Wikipedia when they say he said: 

“You need to try to return to the time when you were a little kid, creating things on a big sheet of paper in a beautiful sunbeam, and not having any cares at all about how it might one day be received. It's when children learn to think, "Is this any good?" that they start to become paralyzed creatively. And this is why most adults don't draw, don't write, don't sing, don't dance, and are terrified in front of audiences….” 

Doing nothing for no good reason, alone, for a really long time is the only credible solution I’ve found out of the state of paralysis he’s describing. Because the audience I’m terrified of lives inside my head, I have to practice living as if it doesn’t exist. And when done in good faith, the results are often surprising and far more playful than I expected them to be going in. I hope one day I meet someone who gets the need to do that sort of thing…