I love solitude, I love lots of time alone, days and days of it. That’s why I went to my cottage by the sea for five consecutive winters, spending the week days there alone. But I knew back then, and I know it now, that I loved that solitude because I had friends and family, and a husband, who kept the home fires burning, to return to each weekend.
Recently I have had contact with someone is desperately lonely during this pandemic. She told me that since she’d lived alone for so many years, she thought this isolation would be easy. But not so. All her ‘communities’ have been taken away--committees, professional clubs, church, luncheon gatherings, you name it. Her family lives far away, and they have busy lives, and don’t contact her as much as she’d like. She is alone with herself.
For me, being alone is not same as solitude. Being alone can connote loneliness in the midst of physical and emotional isolation. Solitude is a way of being with one’s self and with God.
Recently I have had contact with someone is desperately lonely during this pandemic. She told me that since she’d lived alone for so many years, she thought this isolation would be easy. But not so. All her ‘communities’ have been taken away--committees, professional clubs, church, luncheon gatherings, you name it. Her family lives far away, and they have busy lives, and don’t contact her as much as she’d like. She is alone with herself.
For me, being alone is not same as solitude. Being alone can connote loneliness in the midst of physical and emotional isolation. Solitude is a way of being with one’s self and with God.