Years ago a friend once wrote this to me in a comment on something I had written:
I always felt sorry for the people who couldn’t enjoy their own company, who thought something was wrong if they were by themselves… Lately, I’ve been turning even more into a hermit. Being a loner means you appreciate yourself, and you bring that appreciation to all experiences, including relationships, because you already have an anchor in yourself.
At 75 I now seem to know nothing but solitude. I am utterly at one with myself, but not at peace with this yet.
There wasn’t any other way than solo to experience all the places I wanted to see in years past, so I did it by myself. For instance, the five road trips around the country when I was in my 30s. Each one was an experience of a lifetime. I am forever richer for having had those adventures, personal odysseys, and “blue highway” road sagas.
These days I am often the only solitary person at the gardens and Nature preserves I visit frequently. I don’t get depressed about this. This is me: a person who not only cherishes solitude but knows little else, outwardly and in my interior life. Nature is my great comforter and healer. The outside world with its mad rush of cars and people dissolve utterly in quiet Nature sanctuaries.
I have a number of good friends online, but no actual friends to interact with in person in the city where I live. I’ve tried for several years to cultivate a few intellectually compatible people, but nothing has come of it.
Although I can be a master of small talk, I dislike it very much. I can be quite extroverted and social, as in my past job roles. But I’d much rather be alone than around people who are well meaning and pleasant, but only provide superficial banter, not intellectually stimulating talk, for whatever reason.
The constant aloneness every day and night since the days of my caregiving ended six years ago, has been a new realm of deep solitude that coincided at the beginning with the Covid pandemic. For two years, I saw or spoke to hardly anyone, except by phone with my brother and sister. This provided me with uninterrupted time to read, think, and listen to fascinating people on the Internet, mostly via YouTube, and this continues in a vastly expanded period of learning and discovery to this day, this present moment, which keeps me engaged with the life of the mind, mine and others’.
I communicate daily via the Internet with a friend in Georgia who shares similar interests. This has helped immensely to stave off loneliness, which at times is present in the silence and physical aloneness I experience every day, no matter the depth and richness of online communication. I’m not sure what state of mind I’d be in now without this correspondence.
The Internet has become my de facto social life, but it is still a virtual life, and at the end of the day I sometimes feel a hollowness and a loneliness too deep for words. Thankfully, this does not linger, and usually goes away when I immerse myself in interests such as writing and photography.
The point of all this being that no matter how much I prefer solitude and how much time I spend online, I’m still in an empty, quiet apartment all the time.
The vast number of books and the intellectually stimulating life of the mind I enjoy in my solitude are still not an adequate substitute for sitting across from a good friend, at home or in a cafe or restaurant, looking into each other’s eyes and feeling the oneness of real, physical presence and connection. I used to know that many years ago when I was young during my 20s. But those times are just distant memories now. No amount of virtual reality or AI can substitute for being in the actual presence of others. But the kind of person you are with matters immensely.
So deep friendship, or any kind of deeply meaningful relationships, are area of life I have for many reasons been shut off from, by myself, by circumstances, and by the mysterious workings of a mind and soul reaching out feebly to God when no one person can fulfill the basic human needs that still adamantly exist and cry out for relief and comfort.
Part of what I experience and acknowledge — without self-pity — might be termed “embodied. This, as someone once wrote, is the loneliness of not hearing another voice in the room. The loneliness of not sharing a meal. The loneliness of not having someone notice when you’ve had a difficult day. The loneliness of physical absence.. Many millions of elderly people live with this type of loneliness, day and day out.
According to Judith M. Smith, PhD, RN, writing in the Journal of Gerontological Nursing, embodied loneliness is the physical and physiological experience of isolation. It describes how the emotion of loneliness manifests directly in the body—such as chronic muscle tension, physical emptiness, fatigue, and a deep, biological craving for human touch or connection.
Lately, I have been experiencing these symptoms more than ever before. When I was working full time, and caregiving for my mother for all those years that ended in 2020, I had no time to even think about loneliness. My days were sometimes “36 hours.”
The type of loneliness I have been describing can cancel out the benefits of healthy and productive solitude, if allowed to fester. I resist and fight against that, but it’s getting more difficult to do. I find myself not in a healthy life balance now, I admit, but it has come to pass almost inevitably, given my lifelong cultivation of solitude or what I also refer to as “aloneness.” The question for me to ponder is “When does solitude become a deep loneliness of the psyche, and then the more physical embedded forms of loneliness. Right now, I have not found a way avoid that unhealthy situation. I take some solace in the fact that I am not alone in this.
You might say with frustration, “Why don’t you just go out and meet people? Get involved in something.” That’s much easier said than done, I can assure you, especially with someone completely at home in their own company, who nevertheless is only human and knows full well the powerful feeling of satisfaction, well being and even, dare I say it, happiness, that comes with being in the good company of others. Also, I use the excuse of being too old to change.
I must always remember that some of the most enduring friendships are built not on intellectual interests, but on shared kindness, curiosity, humor, loyalty, and presence. I have been blessed through my jobs to have had many co-worker friends like this.
The recognition and acknowledgement of what I have just been talking about, are of themselves signs that my solitude, however deep, has not hardened into the isolation of a near-recluse, but I’m close to being there. In my solitude there’s still a doorway through which another person or persons could enter.
But deep down in the mighty fortress of my soul, do I really need or want that? Is the wisdom of age enough?
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