Imagine you’re in a small boat on a clear lake. It’s just you and the sleepy sound of water slapping rhythmically against the hull and the distant shore. The tide takes you where it wants but you are already where you need to be. You’re still, quiet and happy. Time evaporates with no schedule and no phone interrupts your dream-state. You think of nothing in particular because time no longer matters as you drift. The lesson here is that occasional solitude offers a healthy alternative to a hectic schedule. Life’s significance pushes through time as it draws out in front of us. The result is we suddenly feel as if we are running to catch up day after day.
Jean-Jacque Rousseau expanded his idea of solitude as a means to happiness in his book, “Reveries of a Solitary Walker.” He spent time in his small boat on a lake in Switzerland. He realized that “with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy.” His definition of happiness appears stripped down at first read but simplicity is its strength. He understood that solitude is not an escape from the world but more a stepping into being by seizing the feeling of existence, quietly and purposefully. Taking time for solitude is not a selfish act. Consider it a personal recharge, a way of becoming more fully human for yourself and others.