Last Monday I got home at 6 p.m., shoved my phone in my pocket, grabbed my headphones, and took myself on a two-hour walk. It was warm, which has been rare recently, but there was a light breeze so the weather was lovely. I had no homework and had just finished my piano lesson, so I had nothing to do and nowhere to be. I walked circles around the outskirts of my neighborhood, looking at all the trees and letting my thoughts run rampant. I rolled up my sleeves and let the last sunlight of the day hit my skin like a plant trying to photosynthesize. (This actually ended up working against me, though, because I somehow got sunburned…in winter). Eventually, I stopped in a little grove at the bottom of the neighborhood. The grove is by the tennis courts and, basically, is just a small area with lots of trees, but the trees are always green, and no one is ever really there.
I took off my headphones. It was quiet.
The difference in noise felt jarring, and I had to take a few moments to myself to adapt. For the next 10 minutes or so, I lay down staring at the sky, nervously fidgeting with my hands because I have no idea what to do with them when I’m not holding my phone or a book. Scrolling through social media or reading is almost second nature to me in an environment like this. I inspected my nails, which were getting a little too long, and I looked up at the birds in the trees, my eyes filtering back between the red hues of the feathers and the rhythm of their wings flapping. I counted seven birds, though I’m not sure what kind since I’m not an ornithologist, and four caterpillars near me.
The boringness of this felt oddly transformative, since it was the first time I had truly slowed down in a very long time. I felt I could finally hear my own thoughts, which made me feel so much lighter. Like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. By the time my eyes slid to the bright phone screen next to me, it had been three hours since I left my house. I had quite a few texts from my parents since I missed dinner, but considering I was only two minutes away on Life360, they weren’t too concerned. I got up and slowly walked back up the hill to my house. While doing so I got stuck behind a couple that was speaking about a woman they didn’t like. (If I was listening accurately, she missed a baby shower and is now being scorned by the friend group). So I slowed down and listened – something I was very fond of doing when I was younger. I’d walk around and listen in on people’s conversations, purposefully avoiding getting too close, not because I cared that I was eavesdropping, but because I didn’t want to lose my place in the conversation. It was calming. I used to love the feeling of belonging to something greater, like the fact that everyone was connected in this huge universe. I felt that by listening to other people, I could somehow relive their own experiences for myself and we could have some kind of secret connection that no one else would hold.
Forcefully detaching myself from engaging in any conversations and confronting being alone with my own thoughts was more peaceful than it sounded. These past two years I have, quite literally, been overworking myself to a concerning degree, to the point where my insomnia flares up and I only get a few hours of sleep a night. I’ve been living life one day at a time, endlessly moving forward. There have been 50 different things on my plate, and I’ve felt the burdens weighing down on my shoulders until I find myself hoping that every responsibility I have will just fall away.
I think that in the overwhelmingness of these feelings, I began to lose my own thoughts. At least, while on my walk, I actually heard my own thoughts clearly. I felt grounded. In the rush of productivity and trying to stay up-to-date on school, I seem to have forgotten the joy and magic of doing nothing.
When I was younger, my dad’s solution to everything was to just spend time by yourself. I’d tell my parents about an anxiety that I had, and the answer was pretty much always the same. “Go sit by yourself,” he’d tell me, “and don’t do anything. Maybe go on a walk if you need to.” I was initially reluctant, because I was worried that my sisters would do cool things, and I would miss out on everything. Growing up with two sisters close in age meant I was never really alone at a young age. So being by myself felt strange and foreign to me.
By the third or fourth time my father said this, I stopped feeling like I was missing out. Somehow, my thoughts would organize themselves into a single file line, and I could see everything laid out almost like a timeline. This gradually became a habit as I grew older. Whenever I have a worry that feels unsolvable, I go somewhere no one else is and set aside all distractions. In very drastic situations, I go on a walk. Epiphanies only happen when everything around me falls silent.
Solitude is not an emotion, it’s a state of being, but it feels so much more than an actual emotion. It’s magical, a soundless apocalypse in the way the world suddenly reduces to nothing but myself. I can hear time passing without the needle in the clock ticking. Not in the way where I am constantly chasing time, but in a way where we can coexist. The world can orbit around the sun, and I will still feel at peace. I think if it were just me in the company of solitude everything would feel lighter. Brighter. Quieter.
A mistake a lot of people make is assuming that loneliness and solitude are the same; they are similar but not the same. Loneliness is like negative space. It is the absence of human company, the absence of connection, generally it is just the absence of something. You can choose to be alone, but loneliness is not a choice. It can sneak up on you, whether you’re by yourself or with people. Oftentimes it’s romanticized in media–there is a misconceived notion that great things are born out of loneliness. I don’t think that being miserable needs to be a prerequisite for good art, even though it does seem like it.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt lonely while in a chosen state of solitude. I’m a big introvert, so choosing for people to be around me is more of a choice than being alone. I think a lot of people mistake being an introvert for being shy, which I’m not. I love being around people and meeting my friends, but I also like being alone a lot. This probably stems from my dad telling me it’s good to be alone sometimes from a young age, but it ended up being more all the time.
I think life does get fractionally easier, at least, if you learn to be comfortable in your own company. Appreciating solitude (true solitude, without scrolling on your phone), seems to be the basis of self-sufficiency. Eating alone, reading alone, and walking alone are all therapeutic for me.
The other day I realized just how much time I spend walking around and not looking up. I’m always walking around with my headphones on, meaning that I’m never truly just looking around. Taking a few moments to just walk, no phone, no music, no one else, and take in my surroundings is a special thing I wish I did more often.
