Stephanie Rosenbloom - Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude

Paris; June. The taxi rolled to a stop in front of 22 rue de la Parcheminerie. It was Saturday morning, before the caf chairs were put out, before visitors began arriving at the old church, before check-in time at the little hotel with its window boxes of red geraniums.

Cigarette butts and red petals were scattered across the sidewalk.

I was alone with a suitcase and a reservation. And days to live however I chose.

The average adult spends about one-third of his or her waking time alone.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow

How are you spending yours? Scrolling Facebook? Texting? Tweeting? Online shopping? The to-do list is endless.

But time isnt.

Alone time is an invitation, a chance to do the things youve longed to do. You can read, code, paint, meditate, practice a language, or go for a stroll.

Alone, you can pick through sidewalk crates of used books without worrying youre hijacking your companions afternoon or being judged for your lousy idea of a good time. You need not carry on polite conversation. You can go to a park. You can go to Paris.

Youd hardly be alone. From North America to South Korea more people are now living by themselves than ever before. Single-person households are projected to be the fastest-growing household profile globally from today to 2030. More people are dining solo. More are traveling alonea lot more. From vacation rental companies to luxury tour operators, industry groups have been reporting double-digit upticks in solo travel. Airbnb is seeing more solo travelers than ever. Intrepid Travel reports that half of its guestssome seventy-five thousand people a yearare now traveling by themselves, leading the company to create its very first solos only tours. And the boom isnt being driven just by people who are single: The married-with-kids solo traveler market is growing as well. Nearly 10 percent of American travelers with partners and children are taking solo vacations during the year, according to one of the worlds largest travel marketing organizations, MMGY Global. In other words, traveling alone isnt just for twentysomethings and retirees, but for anyone who wants it, at any age, in any situation: partners, parents, and singles looking for romanceor not.

Few of us want to be recluses. The rise of coworking and coliving spaces around the world is but the latest evidence of that. Yet having a little time to ourselves, be it five days in Europe or five minutes in our backyard, can be downright enviable.

Some 85 percent of adultsboth men and women, across all age groupstold the Pew Research Center that its important for them to be completely alone sometimes. A survey by Euromonitor International found that people want more time not only with their families, but also by themselves. And yet many of us, even those who cherish alone time, are often reluctant to do certain things on our ownwhich may lead us to miss out on entertaining, enriching, even life-changing experiences and new relationships.

A series of studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that men and women were likely to avoid enjoyable public activities like going to a movie or restaurant if they had no one to accompany them. Any potential pleasure and inspiration that might come from seeing a great film or an art show was outweighed by their belief that going alone wouldnt be as much fun, not to mention their concerns about how they might be perceived by others.

Indeed, for many of us, solitude is something to be avoided, something associated with problems like loneliness and depression. Freud observed that the first situation phobias of children are darkness and solitude. In many preliterate cultures, solitude was thought to be practically intolerable, as the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote in Flow, his book about the science of happiness: Only witches and shamans feel comfortable spending time by themselves.

Perhaps its not surprising that a series of studies published in the journal Science in 2014 found that many participants preferred to administer an electric shock to themselves rather than be left alone with their own thoughts for fifteen minutes. Man, as scientists and philosophers from Aristotle on have noted, is a social animal. And with good reason. Positive relationships are crucial to our survival; to humanitys collective knowledge, progress, and joy. One of the longest studies of adult life in history, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has tracked hundreds of men for nearly eighty years, and the takeaway again and again has been that good relationshipswith family, friends, colleagues, and people in our communitiesmake for happy, healthy lives.

Socially isolated people, on the other hand, are at an increased risk for disease and cognitive decline. As Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard study, has not so subtly put it: Loneliness kills. Christian hermits broke up their solitary periods with communal work and worship. Thoreau had three chairs in his house in the woods, one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Solitude and its perils is an ancient and instructive story.

But its not the whole story. The company of others, while fundamental, is not the only way of finding fulfillment in our lives.

For centuries people have been retreating into solitudefor spirituality, creativity, reflection, renewal, and meaning. Buddhists and Christians entered monasteries. Native Americans went up mountains and into valleys. Audrey Hepburn took to her apartment. I have to be alone very often, she told