On doing things alone

How to be alone without feeling lonely

Note: I explore themes of connection and aloneness further in my new podcast and newsetter,

A social life, with friends

1.

Last Saturday night, I’d just moved into a new sublet for the week, and the bedroom window overlooked a lively pub. The weather was delicious, there was a cacophony of voices, and there I was inside and alone.

I began to feel lonely. But as the vague emptiness made its attempts to spread, I caught myself wondering if I was mislabeling the experience. 

What is loneliness? I know it’s not the same thing as being alone. We can feel lonely at a farmer’s market. At a party surrounded by people. At home with our family.

There are various types of loneliness and definitions, but one that resonates with me is the state of being alone and feeling sad about it.

I’d say I spend most of my time alone. I’m often living alone. I work alone. I go to restaurants, plays, events and films alone. I’ll go to the park, pool, or pond on a sunny day alone. I do many things alone, without feeling sad about it.

So I was curious: why was I sad this time?

I realised it was the comparison with others that was making me feel lonely—not the act of being alone.

I was having a night in, looking directly across the street at a plethora of others who had company, and at that moment it made me feel like perhaps I was the only 34-year-old in a big city not out with friends on a sunny evening, or on a date, or having a barbecue or a picnic or party.

Of course, that’s far from reality. People do all sorts of things with their evenings, and besides, perhaps there was someone sitting at that very pub, looking up at the window at the lone figure, wishing they could be alone instead.¹

It struck me that if I was only feeling sad because other people had something I didn’t, then maybe loneliness is sometimes just looking in the wrong direction.

2.

If loneliness is the state of being alone and feeling sad about it, perhaps solitude is the state of being alone and feeling content.

Like wishing for more time only to fill it when it arrives, sometimes we long for moments of solitude and then as soon as we get one, we think it needs to be different.

This familiar phenomenon, I realised, is not so much loneliness but rather unpracticed solitude. We might reach for our phones and scroll, rewatch the same comforting sitcom we’ve seen five times, or spiral in comparison instead of honing the skill of being alone.

It’s a pity to fill our solitude in with connection substitutes. Rewatching Sex and the City for the fifth (or is it sixth? seventh?) time no doubt has it’s place, but when we do something to fill our time rather than something we find fulfilling, that feeling of emptiness often spreads.

We miss the sometimes rare opportunity to find who we are, or how we are. As Oscar Wilde may said, “I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”

In my own encounter with loneliness last Saturday, for example, I had overlooked that it was my choice to stay in. I need to be alone to find my centre and calibrate various encounters. Otherwise, as May Sarton described, “I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.”

Once I reminded myself of this choice, I thought of all the things I’ve longed to do when I had a moment alone—to read a book, write, cook, do nothing.

There are as many ways to be with ourselves in solitude as there can be in company, if we practice looking. We can be in solitude at home on a Saturday night, we can be in solitude out in the world.

I reached for a book, crawled out the window onto the roof, and sat and read while I began to relish the background cacophony of voices, rather than envy them.

3.

I think we mistake a lack of company as loneliness when often loneliness is a lack of a specific type of company. 

When we compare ourselves, we perceive a lack—this person has something I don’t have. We then convince ourselves that a specific thing will fix our perceived lack.

Take last Saturday night, for example. In that moment I could have called a friend, gone outside, swiped on Tinder. There were plenty of opportunities to connect—but I didn’t want any type of connection, I wanted a specific type of connection.

I felt lonely for this one particular thing—my fantasy version of the Saturday night I think a 34-year-old single woman in a big city should have. A big group of friends to go to the pub with. A rollicking dinner party. A dance. A flirt. 

By getting caught up in the comparison fantasy and feeling lonely about it, I was missing the reality—I didn’t actually want those things right then. I wanted to be alone! I’m reminded of a line from The Art of Disappearing by Naomi Shihab Nye:

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.

All to say, shouldn’t I feel lucky, in this instance, rather than lonely? 

We miss so much by thinking our lives need to look a certain way instead of enjoying how things have come together in our own way. As Richard Brautigan said, “For fear you will be alone you do so many things that aren’t you at all.”

4.

I like to remind myself what a luxury it is to have a choice: to be alone, or to be in company. There are, of course, those who have scare alone time as well as others who are very isolated by no choice of their own but rather systemic failings of support/

Such varying circumstances are why it’s important that we inspect these labels—what we call loneliness, solitude, and isolation—and recognise that they are very different things.

The sources and solutions will be various, too. Sometimes it’s not social comparison or a longing for something specific that makes us feel lonely, but rather hurdle or even a fear of connecting.

As psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson said, people will come into his office and say that they don’t feel like they have any friends or anyone they can call, but upon digger deeper, they do have people, they’re just afraid to call: “I think it’s important for us to be clear that saying things like ‘I don’t have friends to call’ is a way that we tell a story that helps us avoid being afraid.”

I’ve had that no-one-to-call feeling, so a few years ago I started to keep a list of people I do have to call as a reminder.² The list, I think, also serves as a reminder to reach out to others in case they’re having a no-one-to-call feeling, too. 

The thing is, even just calling someone to say I didn’t feel like I had anyone to call is a way to connect. When we share our fears, we can begin to dismantle our shame, and transform the experience.

As Thompson said, “The moment that you start to tell your story vulnerably to someone else, and that person meets you with empathy—without trying to fix your loneliness, without trying to fix your shame—your entire body will begin to change. Not all at once. But you feel distinctly different. I’m not as lonely in that moment because you are with me. And I sense you sensing me. That’s a neural reality.”

Sometimes we need to practise our solitude, but sometimes we also need to practise sharing the difficult parts of our life with the people willing to do the same with us.

5.

If a part of loneliness is often longing for a type of connection you’re currently missing, an antidote might be to focus on the types of connections you have instead.

Right now, I don’t have a large cluster of friends living nearby and the ability to host dinner parties of my fantasies because I’m temporarily in different houses. 

What I do have is freedom. As Charles Bukowski wrote, “And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”

The same can extend to the loneliness we might feel in not having a significant other, work colleagues or so on: are you lonely or free?

6.

Being alone is revelatory.

What we find in ourselves when we we are alone can be difficult to face. Maybe that’s why it can be easier to call it loneliness, almost as a shorthand for something far more textured. 

Our aloneness sometimes show us the sweetness in solitude, but sometimes it can show us that we feel sad and disconnected, angry and frustrated, tired and wanting different things in our lives.

Sometimes it might just show us our loneliness, and that’s okay. Sometimes the best thing is to just be lonely. 

Taste the experience. See what it reveals. Follow the feeling. Share it. Practice being alone. Let it guide you. Maybe even, in time, come to enjoy the experience for all that it is.

1. I wonder if there is a word for being in company and feeling sad about it because you’d rather be alone?

2. This exercise along with some additional things to read, listen to and try on the topic of being alone but not lonely will feature in the next special edition newsletter Things from the week, sent every Sunday to paid subscribers.