Solitude: It’s the ultimate key to happiness

“Entering my room, closing the door, and hearing only the sound of the ticking of the clock. I offer myself this vital luxury once a month,” confides Mathilde, 48 years. This dynamic mom, manager of an events planning company, made a pact with her husband and two children: to regularly give her a night to herself – cut off from everything and especially from them. In the midst of juggling between work, her husband, her children, dinner parties, and various other constraints, one day Mathilde realised a sad fact: she never has the opportunity to hang out…with herself.
“I felt like a train that never stops. At the same time, being alone with nothing to do felt to me like more of a self-centred caprice than a necessity…” And here lies the main problem. Solitude has a terrible reputation. “It is perceived as something that must be always fought against. At the same time, it is one of the major paradoxes in our world of hyper-communication. We flee from it, and desire it all at once,” says historian Georges Minois, author of the l’Histoire de la solitude et des solitaires¹ (The history of solitude and the solitary). But aside from this contemporary ambivalence, is being alone not the antidote to the ills of our society?

SOLITUDE: LOVE YOU BUT I HATE YOU

How do we spend time alone? This is a question to which The School of Life dedicates a complete course! The school, which teaches “everything we did not learn in school”, opened in the heart of Paris in May. Modelled on the British model, it tries to answer the daily “existential” questions like “how to be a better friend?”, “how to boost your creativity?” etc. through literature, philosophy, art and pop culture. The module on being alone explores the concept in the context of our society. “Our culture promotes extremely contradictory attitudes. Spending time alone can be considered as something soothing or depressing, a sign of strength and independence or social inadequacy.” This illustrates this mix of appeal and fear when it comes to the idea of self-imposed and desired solitude. According to Georges Minois, being alone is not easy, and requires a certain inner balance. “Since ancient times, knowing how to be alone is known to be a characteristic found in the exceptional man.” And great philosophers have conveyed the idea that loneliness is an antisocial act. “Aristotle said that (solitude) is not human. It only happens with monsters or gods. Man, meanwhile, is a social animal. If he seeks to isolate himself he is not human,” says the historian.

THE OPPRESSION OF CONVERSATION

Going in search of your inner self and knowing how to depend on yourself to think requires effort, and makes the “silence” even louder. And fear is generated from the presence of this intense vacuum. In one experiment, anthropologist David Le Breton puts his finger on the reasoning behind this technical failure: “The only kind of silence that this dictatorship of communication recognises is that of failure, the failure of contact, the end of transmission. There is a cessation of conversation more than the emergence of an internal dialogue.” How can we be alone in a world that pushes us to stay connected? Marianne, 40, has experienced a weekend in the country, alone, no screens, no music and no internet connection. “I was coming out of a painful breakup. My friends and family never stopped trying to take care of me. They took turns to be by my bedside, filled with the idea that it was unwise to leave me alone. In reality, they were constantly in my surroundings trying to fill a void which I had yet to confront myself. Exhausted by all these people and the noise, I could not hear myself.”

In a Parisian cafe inspired by coffee shops in New York, the moofers (ie: the bunch of solitary workers, glued to their Macs and their frappuccinos) coexist without speaking. Manon, 39, a freelance graphic designer, has every other morning to mingle with his peers without seeking any form of conversation. “Here, I have no problem being alone. The lines are clearly drawn. There are self-employed workers who plunge into their work, but also people who read the newspaper or watch the passers-by…” Though this exchange, real or virtual, and human connections are strongly encouraged to fight against the ambient individualism, the obligation of social interactions exhausts us. “It is incessantly reinforced that we must be efficient, have a full life and exciting inter-personal relationships,” says Marie-Chantal Doucet, a sociologist and author of Solitude et sociétés contemporaines, une sociologie clinique de l’individu et du rapport à l’autre (Solitude and contemporary societies, a clinical sociology of the individual and of the relationship with others). But this pressure of conversation and concern to be constantly present always makes us suffer. “There is an ambivalent relationship between us and the society. We want to be with each other, without feeling swallowed up,” says the sociologist. In an era of hyper-communication where places to be alone seem increasingly rare, how do we find time and space to do it?

CREATE A VACUUM TO CREATE THE WORLD

For Marie-Chantal Doucet, “we are in a phase of transition in which individuals are learning to be alone.” It is a gradual learning curve, illustrated by the emergence of some rather atypical public places. In Amsterdam, the Eenmaal restaurant is the first in the world to exclusively provide tables for one person! The idea may seem far-fetched, is based on the notion of paradoxical loneliness, ie. no longer synonymous with being a “loser” but instead being connected – to one’s own time. Here, guests have no obligation to interact and do not feel the pressure of eyes on their backs during a solo lunch. “This type of approach illustrates the collective effort that has to be made to improve the image of solitude. We need to help each other to reconnect with ourselves,” analyses Marie-Noëlle Schurmans, a professor at the University of Geneva and author of Solitudes (The Solitaries) (ed. PUF). And the historian Georges Minois added: “Sought solitude is a reaction to the loneliness that results from being in big cities.”

Sociologist Marie-Noëlle Schurmans is party to the meeting of the “neo-lonely”. Her conclusion: there is more than one form of solitude. “Among the desired forms of solitude, some are self-initiated, usually carried out in the form of a trip or a retreat. We get rid of our habits and certainties, we seek to disorientate ourselves, but in a controlled manner. The goal is to build up our courage, to be more sure of our strengths and aware of our limitations. “The other kind is less glamorous and is more situationally-linked, that we can identify, “defensive solitude”. “It is a reaction against the pressure of work and imbalances. As a result of constantly giving (to your family, your children, your job etc.) without receiving, you begin to feel claustrophobic.” Marie-Noëlle discussed with these men and women who have felt it necessary to find spaces for themselves again. “By spending time alone (one evening, a day, a weekend), we come to discover a potential tool that we can use to defend and recharge ourselves in order to return to the daily grind with ‘ammunition’. These spaces may even be a gym, or a few minutes in the garden, which can be sufficient to reconnect, “says Marie-Noëlle Schurmans.

In order to create, we also need solitude. Think about the painter in front of his easel, the composer perched on his stool, or the writer battling with his blank page. How can we make magic happen without taking the time to tap into our potential? “Individuals claim a space for themselves in order to create the world of things that would not exist without the self,” says sociologist Marie-Chantal Doucet. Creation is just an ambitious project, quipps Françoise Cruz, director of the Naïves books department. In the first book, dedicated to all the Solitudes, toutes les solitudes (Solitary, all the solitary souls), she went to meet singer Sandrine Piau, sailor Isabelle Autissier and choreographer Angelin Preljocaj to discover their idea and experiences of solitude. Preljocaj, a member in the original cast of one of the most beautiful repertoires of contemporary dance, shared with her the keys to her creativity: create a vacuum to create the world.

1. For Fayard. 2. theschooloflife.com/paris 3. Contraction mobile out of office  +  workers . 4. For editions University Press of Quebec.

Amandine GROSSE