The Pros and Cons of Solitude

“All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you'll be quite a lot.”

-        Dr. Suess, from Oh, The Places You’ll Go

I just took an on-line quiz to determine once and for all if I’m an introvert, an extrovert or somewhere in between (what’s sometimes called an ambivert). For people who know me, I can appear to be an extrovert, but I recall taking the Myers-Briggs personality test in grad school as part of a broader class discussion, and my classmates responding with shock when my test results labeled me as an introvert. To them, I was an active and willing participant in the social life of our close-knit group: I even co-chaired our social committee that led to activities like baseball games, scavenger hunts, and other escapades. To them, that didn’t jibe with the label introvert at all.

But I knew better. I knew that while I indeed craved a social outlet every day – even today, I get anxious if my calendar is lacking pre-planned activities – I also needed alone time, and that without it I’d be one unhappy camper. This is why big gatherings for weekend getaways fill me with anxiety, even if I’m the one who planned the activity! By contrast, sometimes all the interaction I need in a day is a quick conversation with a neighbor and a hello from a cashier.

So, while I think of myself as an ambivert, the test I just took says quite unequivocally that I’m an introvert. Fair enough. I’ll embrace the label.

Which leads me to solitude, from which all my creativity flows.

I think back to being a child in the 70s with two older siblings who went to school while I was left to fill my day with my mother whose parenting style was fairly hands-off. Sure, I played with friends from time to time, but a good chunk of my day was spent as a solo act: I dug up ant hills in the back yard, copied maps, built houses with Lincoln Logs, created abstract pictures with a Spirograph, and collected shotgun shells in the field behind our house (I shit you not – my parents let me wander around a field by myself with a paper grocery bag, collecting yellow, red, orange and green shotgun shells. What could possibly go wrong?).

And I wrote songs. Even before my family inherited my maternal grandparents’ piano, I was composing songs in my head, sometimes sharing them with my classmates in the back of the bus – funny songs about smoking cigarettes (quite edgy for a 6 year-old!) and one about Ohio that sounded oddly like George Baker Selection’s “Paloma Blanca,” one of those AM radio hits that shaped my early ear.

The songwriting never stopped. Shortly after the spinet was delivered to our door and placed in our living room, I was composing tunes, including two that my father painstakingly wrote out on manuscript paper for me. I still have them. One really isn’t a tune at all, but just an organized discovery of triads, but the other is, I must say, kind of impressive. I was no Mozart, that’s for sure, but the song has a good melody and cleverly transitions from a major key to its relative minor – not bad for an 8-year-old.

But all of this was happening because I was alone. Because there was nothing good to watch on TV. Because my older siblings had better things to do than entertain their baby brother. Because my parents weren’t ones to fill up my time. Because my next-door neighbor traveled to Florida for weeks at a time and there was no one to hang with. And because there was no such thing as the internet, smart phones and home computers.

Solitude. I’ve often stated that the two ingredients required for creativity are boredom and silence. This isn’t entirely true – musicians, actors and writers can be extremely creative in group settings – but it rings true for me. As a teenager I worked in retail, and it drove me crazy when my inner songwriting jukebox was unusable because of the Muzak pumping through the speakers overhead. My Orwellian nightmare would undoubtedly include my being exposed to continuous streams of music. Even good music for long periods of time exhausts me the same way conversing at a party for three or four hours can.

I wrote about my need for solitude in my song, “Falling by Degrees.”

I need silence
I need space around me
And it’s okay
It’s got nothing in the world to do with you

And this lyric alludes to the downside of solitude. My need for solitude has probably been misconstrued by some as being standoffish, and I know it’s kept me from exploring fun activities at times because they seemed like too big of a hassle. I’ve said no to outings – especially ones for multiple nights – because I feared I wouldn’t have a way to escape and recharge my batteries. And saying no to activities can snowball; when invitations are rejected, they eventually stop coming. Over the years, I’ve learned to be more careful to say yes to the right things and no to the wrong things, but it’s a tricky balancing act.

These days, as an empty nester whose wife travels quite a lot for work, I am careful to try to plan something social every day. Not ALL day, but a lunch, a phone call or two, a hang with the neighbors…something, just enough to get me out of my head.

And that’s probably the biggest con of being an introvert – being unable to get out of one’s own head. I’ve been there, and it’s not always a pretty place.

The Lure of Isolation

I recently spoke to a 47 year-old bachelor friend of mine who calculated that he’s lived alone for two straight decades, and as much as he’d one day like to have a lasting relationship, he’s not sure he’d ever be able to adapt to having to live with someone aside from his dog and one-eyed cat. Old habits die hard. Twenty year-old habits die harder. His idiosyncrasies and routines are ingrained.

Or so he thinks. I have another friend who didn’t get married until the ripe age of 60, so my bachelor buddy may be more capable of change than he gives himself credit for.

His calculation of years of solitude caused me to do a quick calculation of my own. Although I’ve spent countless hours alone, I have never actually lived alone. Not from the early years as the last addition to a family of five to the most recent years, when my own family of five shed a few from our humble abode. (The Sesame Street song – so anachronistic today for so many Americans – runs through my head from time to time: “I’ve got five people in my family, and there’s not one of them I’d swap…”) Sure, there were a few months in grad school when my roommate’s fixation on a new girlfriend resulted in a period of my coming home to an empty apartment, but he’d be back for days at a time, his name was still on the lease, and this was grad school, when every day and every evening was brimming with social activity. If anything, I was relieved to have a few moments to myself.

For me, solitude is one of two essential ingredients for creativity (the other is time), and during my formative high school years, I had it in spades as my two siblings ventured to college and my mother worked crazy nursing hours. It fed my creative pursuits and allowed me to understand who I am. It’s something I’ve gotten used to, and I’ve found it to be a blessing. As the Dr. Seuss book says, “Whether you like it or not, alone will be something you’ll be quite a lot.” It is, and I’m comfortable with it (I’m alone right now as I write this piece, and I couldn’t be happier). But I also recognized early on as an adult that my need for solitude is offset by my need for human interaction on a daily basis. If I don’t have both, I’m a wreck.  The human contact I experience doesn’t always have to be extensive or particularly meaningful – a nice talk with a dog-walker on the street might be sufficient – but it does have to be there. 

I’m currently reading Bruce Springsteen’s biography, Born to Run (review forthcoming), and he spends quite a few pages exploring his opposing desires for solitude and ample human contact. He writes that early in his role as a father, when one of his children released him from his attention, “I’d often breathe a sigh of relief and run back to my fortress of solitude, where as usual I felt at home, safe, until, like a bear in need of blood and meat, I’d wake from my hibernation and travel through the house for my drink from the cup of human love and companionship.” 

I’m of a similar makeup. Just as my bachelor friend can’t imagine living with someone, I can’t imagine living without someone. If circumstances relegated me to a period of time in an empty house, I believe I’d last about three days before experiencing a mental breakdown. And this leads me to think of my mother, who, when I left for college, lived alone for the first time in her life. She was forty-eight, the same age I am today. And I wonder if she was no more capable of handling that transition than I would be today. 

One of my favorite albums as a teenager, and one that still holds my attention today, is Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I didn’t really understand its themes when I devoured the record during middle school, but today I find it ironic how an album about how isolation results in mental decay was probably enjoyed most often by lonely guys in their bedroom. The lure of isolation, of comfort, control and safety, is ultimately a road to ruin. For a society that’s never been more connected, I believe we are becoming more and more isolated, resulting in the chaos that’s currently ensuing nationwide and globally. Nationalism and hatred breed out of isolation.

We best leave our shells behind, individually and collectively, or we’re all going to be in deep shit.