How to Be Alone (School of Life) (2 page)

But it was not just a question of definitions. I came to see that although for me silence and solitude were so closely connected that I had never really needed to distinguish them, they did not need to be, and for many people they were not by any means the same. The proof cases are the communities where people are silent
together,
like Trappist monasteries or Quaker meetings.

The bedrock of the Quaker way is the silent meeting for worship. We seek a communal gathered stillness, where we can be open to inspiration from the Spirit of God and find peace of mind, a renewed sense of purpose for living, and joy to wonder at God’s creation.

During our meetings for worship some may feel moved to speak: something anyone can do, as all are considered equal. Quakers do not have priests, or a hierarchy, as we believe all people can have a direct relationship with God.

You do not have to be a Quaker to attend Quaker meetings, which are open to all. Meetings can be held anywhere, at any time, although they are often on Sundays in our Quaker meeting houses. If you would like to join us and share in our stillness, you would be most welcome.

(From the official Quaker website,
www.quaker.org.uk
)

But at a far simpler and less self-conscious level most people have had experiences of being silent but not alone: with someone very intimate, for example, you can be with them for joyful hours without any need to speak; breast-feeding a baby and sitting with someone very near to death are experiences of silence with communion. And equally you can be alone but not silent – for example, if you are watching TV or your neighbours are making an appalling amount of din while you are on your own next door.

There are also less emotionally charged times – if you go for a bike ride with someone, you are often silent and clearly not alone; if you sing to yourself, or call to your dog on a solo walk, you are alone but not silent.

One of my favourite fairy stories is ‘The Six Swans’: in order to rescue her brothers who have been put under an enchantment and turned into birds, the heroine takes a vow to remain silent for seven years (she also has to make each brother a vest out of flowers). The first half of her labour is done in solitude – she is alone deep in a forest and sits on the branch of a tree to sew. Eventually a king comes riding by, falls in love with her, takes her back to his palace and marries her. They have three children together but she still does not speak. Terrible things befall her but she holds to her vow, until just as she has been bound to a pyre, about to be burned as a witch because of her refusal to speak, the seven years are completed; her brothers are set free from the spell and they rescue her. The heroine has two separate trials – the first is in isolation, and the second, in obvious and deliberate contrast, in a highly social situation – but in both she is silent.

Obviously these two sorts of silence are not the same. But I was still confused, still having a hard job distinguishing them. So, having written a book about silence, I thought I would like to write one about solitude. This is it. I am writing it because I think there is a serious social and psychological problem around solitude which we need to address. I am writing it because I would like to allay people’s fears and then help them actively enjoy time spent in solitude. But mainly I am writing it because I like writing books and I like solitude. It is a sort of two-for-one deal for me.

II. Being Alone in the Twenty-first Century

1. Sad, Mad and Bad

There is a problem, a serious cultural problem, about solitude. Being alone in our present society raises an important question about identity and well-being. In the first place, and rather urgently, the question needs to be asked. And then – possibly, tentatively, over a longer period of time – we need to try and answer it.

The question itself is a little slippery – any question to which no one quite knows the answer is necessarily slippery. But I think, inasmuch as it can be pinned down, it looks something like this:

How have we arrived, in the relatively prosperous developed world, at least, at a cultural moment which values autonomy, personal freedom, fulfilment and human rights, and above all individualism, more highly than they have ever been valued before in human history, but at the same time these autonomous, free, self-fulfilling individuals are terrified of being alone with themselves?

Think about it for a moment. It is truly very odd.

We apparently believe that we own our own bodies as possessions and should be allowed to do with them more or less anything we choose, from euthanasia to a boob job, but we do not want to be on our own with these precious possessions.

We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person.

We see moral and social conventions as inhibitions on our personal freedoms, and yet we are frightened of anyone who goes away from the crowd and develops ‘eccentric’ habits.

We believe that everyone has a singular personal ‘voice’ and is, moreover, unquestionably creative, but we treat with dark suspicion (at best) anyone who uses one of the most clearly established methods of developing that creativity – solitude.

We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.

We declare that personal freedom and autonomy is both a right and good, but we think anyone who exercises that freedom autonomously is ‘sad, mad or bad’. Or all three at once.

In 1980, US census figures showed 6 per cent of men over forty never married; now 16 per cent are in that position … ‘male spinsters’ – a moniker that implies at best that these men have ‘issues’ and at worst that they are sociopaths.

One fears for these men, just as society has traditionally feared for the single woman. They cannot see how lonely they will be. But in time to ease my anxiety, a British friend came through town … ‘I want to get married,’ he said. Finally. A worthwhile man.

(Vicky Ward,
London Evening Standard,
2008)

In the Middle Ages the word ‘spinster’ was a compliment. A spinster was someone, usually a woman, who could spin well: a woman who could spin well was financially self-sufficient – it was one of the very few ways that mediaeval women could achieve economic independence. The word was generously applied to all women at the point of marriage as a way of saying they came into the relationship freely, from personal choice, not financial desperation. Now it is an insult, because we fear ‘for’ such women – and now men as well – who are probably ‘sociopaths’.

A woman who could spin well was financially self-sufficient.

Being single, being alone – together with smoking – is one of the few things that complete strangers feel free to comment on rudely: it is so dreadful a state (and probably, like smoking, your own fault) that the normal social requirements of manners and tolerance are superseded.

No one is supposed to be single.

In the course of my life, I have loved and lost and sometimes won, and always strangers have been kind. But I have, it appears, been set on a life of single blessedness.

I haven’t minded enough. But now I kind of do. Take dinner parties. There comes a moment, and that question: ‘Why don’t you have a partner?’

It is usually asked by one of a couple, with always a swivel of the eye to his or her other half, so really two people are asking this question.

And I struggle to answer: ‘I have never found the right person … I am a sad and sorry manchild … I am incapable of love … I am a deviant, and prefer giraffes.’

Any answer will fail to satisfy. The questioner expects no happy answer. I am only covering up my bone-deep, life-corroding loneliness. The questioners know this, and the insight they believe it affords comforts them. They are safe.

They look down from the high castle of coupledom, protected from such a fate. But if I were to ask: ‘Why have you settled for him? Why are you stuck with her? Were you so afraid of being alone?’ such questions would be thought rude, intrusive …

Single people can also feel this way about other single people, and about themselves. You see, no one is supposed to be single. If we are, we must account for our deficiencies.

(Jim Friel, BBC online magazine, November 2012)

In both these examples it is clear that thinking the single person ‘sad’ is not enough for society. Normally we are delicate, even over-delicate, about mentioning things that we think are sad. We do not allow ourselves to comment at all on many sad events. Mostly we go to great lengths to avoid talking about death, childlessness, deformity and terminal illness. It would not be acceptable to ask someone at a dinner party
why
they were disabled or scarred. It is conceivable, I suppose, that a person happy in their own coupled relationship really has so little imagination that they think anyone who is alone must be suffering tragically. But it is more complicated than that: Vicky Ward’s tone is not simply compassionate. Her ‘fears for these men’ might at first glance seem caring and kind, but she disassociates herself from her own concern: she does not fear herself,
‘one
fears for them’. Her superficial sympathy quickly slips into judgement: a ‘worthwhile’ man will be looking for marriage; if someone is not, then they have mental-health ‘issues’ and are very possibly ‘sociopaths’.

Here is a list of the traits of a sociopath, based on the psychopathy checklists of H. Cleckley and R. Hare:

Glibness and Superficial Charm

Manipulative and Cunning

Grandiose Sense of Self

Pathological Lying

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt

Shallow Emotions; Incapable of real human attachment to another

Incapacity for Love

Need for Stimulation

Callousness/Lack of Empathy

Poor Behavioural Controls/Impulsive Nature

Early Behaviour Problems/Juvenile Delinquency

Irresponsibility/Unreliability

Promiscuous Sexual Behaviour

Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle

Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility

Does Vicky Ward honestly believe that every uncoupled man over thirty-five is suffering from this serious mental illness? It seems that she does.

Why? Could it be that she is frightened? In her article she comments that, in New York, where she is based, there is an excessive number of single women to men, so if she feels that a committed partner is necessary to a woman’s sense of well-being then she might well feel threatened by men who want something different. Projecting psychopathology onto people who do not agree with you, especially about values, is a very old strategy.

‘They are sad and therefore they are mad’ is a good cover for fear. There is an alternative, though: ‘They are not sad and therefore they are bad.’ My mother was widowed shortly after she turned sixty. She lived alone for the remaining twenty-five years of her life. I do not think she was ever reconciled to her single status. She was very much loved by a great many, often rather unexpected, people. But I think she felt profoundly lonely after my father died, and she could not bear the fact that I was enjoying solitude. I had abandoned marriage, in her view, and was now happy as a pig in clover. It appalled her – and she launched a part-time but sustained attack on my moral status: I was selfish.

It was ‘selfish’ to live on my own
and enjoy it.

Interestingly, this is a very old charge. In the fourth century
AD,
when enthusiastic young Christians were leaving Alexandria in droves to become hermits in the Egyptian desert, their Bishop Basil, infuriated, demanded of one of them, ‘And whose feet will you wash in the desert?’ The implication was that in seeking their own salvation outwith the community, they were neither spreading the faith nor ministering to the poor; they were being selfish. This is a theme that has cropped up repeatedly ever since, particularly in the eighteenth century, but it has a new edge in contemporary society, because we do not have the same high ethic of ‘civil’ or public duty. We are
supposed
now to seek our own fulfilment, to act on our feelings, to achieve authenticity and personal happiness – but mysteriously not do it on our own.

Today, more than ever, the charge carries both moral judgement and weak logic. I write a monthly column for
The Tablet
(a Catholic weekly magazine) partly about living on my own. One month I wrote about the way a conflict of duties can arise: how ‘charitable’ is the would-be hermit meant to be about the needs and demands of her friends? One might anticipate that a broadly Catholic readership would be more sympathetic to the solitary life because it has such a long (and respected) tradition behind it. But I got some poisonous letters, including one from someone who had never met me, but who nonetheless felt free to pen a long vitriolic note which said, among other things: