"Solitude"

I recall past Labor Days that marked the end of summer. Now, our three college-age grandchildren and the one still in high school, have been back on their respective campuses for over a week. It seems to me a sad finish to what in June seemed an endless summer. But they are all happy to be back among friends and the lives they are carving out for themselves.

 

In thinking about this essay on solitude. I wandered past a small pond and came across this lone Painted Turtle pondering its future.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Solitude”

August 30, 2025

 

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it occasionally.”

                                                                Albert Camus (1913-1960)

              The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, 1942

 

Man is inherently social. He craves company. He thrives on companionship. It is one reason there are an estimated 28,000 social and country clubs in the U.S. It is why solitary confinement is severe punishment. 

 

However, Camus was also right. In solitude, imaginations swell. Possibilities enter one’s mind, to be accepted or discarded. Goethe allegedly once wrote: “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.” In schools and universities, students learn from others – their teachers and fellow students. Yet there is truth in the quote attributed to educational reformer John Dewey: “We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.” Henry David Thoreau was unique in his desire for solitude. In Walden or, Life in the Woods: “I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.”

 

While each of us is different, like most I am a social animal. For almost fifty years I worked on a trading floor, surrounded by salespeople and traders. My customers were in cities across the country and in London. I spoke to them daily and met with them regularly. It was a job I loved, requiring continuous contact. Despite being retired for almost ten years, I still stay in touch with many who became friends. Today, besides having a large family – my wife, Caroline, three children and spouses, ten grandchildren, and five surviving siblings – I belong to three ROMEO (retired old men eating out) lunch groups. I love the friendship and the exchange of ideas. Without that stimulation, I would shrivel up.

 

Like the late American novelist Patricia Highsmith who wrote of how her imagination functions better when she didn’t have to speak to people, I love being alone – to let my fancy take wing. Driving alone with the radio off, lying in bed before sleep arrives, or walking woodland trails, I identify with the Lord Byron’s words from “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:” “There is pleasure in the pathless woods/...There is society, where none intrudes...” Treading well-worn paths, I ponder politics; the stock market; world events; friends I have known, especially those who have died; books I have read or am reading; as well as subjects for essays like this – Teddy Bears, eggs, and solitude. I bring a pen and paper, as my memory is not what it was, to jot down words or phrases that come to me. Sitting on a bench that populates these trails – sensibly placed for those my age – I watch a turtle ponder its future (pictured), an ant carry a load back to its nest.

 

But voluntary solitude is not forced loneliness. Social isolation is a health risk for the mentally challenged and the risks they impose to citizens, as we saw last Wednesday in Minneapolis; for the young, as they go through puberty when the desire to be accepted by one’s peers is paramount; and for the elderly when loneliness can lead to a poor quality of life and even premature death. It is why retirement communities, like Essex Meadows where we live, put a premium on social activities. According to the non-profit organization Trust for America’s Health, isolation imposed by restrictions due to COVID resulted in a 20% increase in deaths in 2020 from the effects of alcohol, drugs and suicide.