Michael Harris - Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World

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For David Anderson and Kenny Park

There is another Loneliness

Emily Dickinson

Every life has a rhythm. For most creatures on the planet, that rhythm reflects an ongoing negotiation between the body and its surroundings, between being and environment. Theres a time for resting, a time for hunting, a time for courting, a time for hiding. For us humans, though, its more complicated than that. Because we have the power to shape our environment, through laws and customs, economic and political systems, and, not least, technologies, we are also able to control the rhythm of our lives.

That, it turns out, is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it frees us from the grip of necessity. Were able to make choices about how we spend our time. On the other hand, we can, and frequently do, fall into a daily rhythm that ill suits us or runs counter to our best interests. We fill our days with activities that provide fleeting pleasures or momentary conveniences but that leave us feeling anxious or unfulfilled. In the worst cases, we surrender control over the rhythm of our life to othersto bosses or bureaucrats, to marketers or technicians. We end up living according to a rhythm imposed on us rather than one chosen by us. We dance to someone elses drum.

In this wise and witty book, Michael Harris examines a phenomenon that is altering the rhythm of human life in profound and unsettling ways: the loss of solitude. For more than a century, human life has been getting busier and busier. Media bombard us with messages and diversions. Work time bleeds into leisure time. The social whirl spins ever faster. Until recently, though, there were still moments in the day when the busyness abated and lifes pace decelerated. You would find yourself alone, separated from friends and colleagues, and you would be thrown back on your own resources, your own thoughts. Such interludes could provoke feelings of loneliness and boredom. Yet they also provided opportunities to tap into ideas, perceptions, and emotions inaccessible to the social self.

Now, those moments are being erased. With smartphone in hand, connectivity is continuous. Were in a crowd even when were by ourselves. The chatter never ends; the rhythm never slows. Nonstop networking may feel invigorating, but, as Harris makes clear, we sacrifice much when were never alone. Solitude is refreshing. It strengthens memory, sharpens awareness, and spurs creativity. It makes us calmer, more attentive, clearer headed. Most important of all, it relieves the pressure of conformity. It gives us the space we need to discover the deepest sources of passion, enjoyment, and fulfillment in our lives. Being alone frees us to be ourselvesand that makes us better company when we rejoin the crowd.

The art of solitudethe art that, as Harris elegantly puts it, turns blank days into blank canvasesis hard to master and easy to squander. Contemporary forces of technology, society, and commerce, beneficial forces in so many ways, conspire not only to diminish our opportunities for solitude but to seduce us into believing that solitude is at best inessential and at worst a waste of time. We should resist those forces. We should remind ourselves that a life without solitude is a diminished life. What makes this book so valuable and so timely is that it serves both as a reminder of solitudes worth and as a spur to resistance. Read it in peace.

Nicholas Carr, author of several acclaimed books on technology and culture, including Utopia Is Creepy, The Glass Cage, and the Pulitzer Prizefinalist The Shallows.

Dr. Edith Bone has decided not to cry.

On this autumn afternoon in 1956, her seven years of solitary confinement have come to a sudden end. Beyond the prison gates, the Hungarian Revolutions final, scattered shots are echoing down the streets of Budapest. Inside the gates, Dr. Bone emerges through the prisons front door into the courtyards bewildering sunlight. She is sixty-eight years old, stout and arthritic. She steps from the prisons entrance and blinks at the sky. And then she sees them waiting for her. Those suited, peering men. They are all waiting to see her tears.

Photographers and reporters hoist their barrel lenses and spiral notebooks by the gleaming bus that has come to take her to the British embassy. They watch for the mark of those seven years alone. What scar does such isolation leave on the face? On the hooded eyes? The ordinary result is a descent into madness and crippling depression. But as Dr. Bone steps slowly across the courtyard toward the iron gates, she appears perfectly sane. If anything, she now looks cheerful. The officials and journalists stare. A man from Englands Daily Express scribbles in his notebook, trying his best to dramatize things: he writes that she is limping. Later, in a week or so, hell be embarrassed to learn she was simply given the wrong-sized shoes.

* * *

Dr. Bone was born in Budapest in 1889 and proved an intelligentif disobedientchild. She wished to become a lawyer like her father, but this profession was closed to women. Her options were schoolmistress or doctor; she accepted the latter. Toting her great-grandfathers stethoscope and an ivory-handled Aesculapius stick, she enrolled in the medical faculty at Budapest University in the fall of 1908.

The Great War began soon after her graduation, and so she went to work in a military hospital. Perhaps it was there, seeing the suffering of the poorer classes, that her communist sympathies bloomed: she watched an illiterate Romanian soldiera shepherd before the waras he cried at the window for days, cradling a shattered arm and worrying about his lost children. He was only one broken man among many.

After the war, Dr. Bone devoted herself to Party work in England for sixteen years, and it was this foreign connection that would excite the suspicions of authorities when she returned to Communist Budapest in 1949.

Secret police stopped her at the airport on her way back to England; they packed her into their car and soon were driving her past a sheet-iron gate into their headquarters. Havent we conspired well? joked the driver. Nobody knows where you are. Indeed, her friends in England assumed she was staying on in Hungary and her friends in Hungary assumed shed left for England. Dr. Bone just disappeared.

Inside headquarters, a slim man presented himself, decked in fine clothing and smooth manners. He took her into a little office and told her they knew she was a spy, an agent of the British secret service. Until you tell us what your instructions were, you will not leave this building.

Dr. Bone replied: In that case I shall probably die here, because I am not an agent of the secret service. She was then informed that her arrest was proof of guilt because the Party did not arrest innocent people.

She was escorted into the basement, and then into a narrow cell barely larger than its iron-framed bed. She could reach up and touch the ceiling. Much to the annoyance of her jailors, Dr. Bone lay herself down and fell immediately into a peaceful sleep. Later, she shivered from the cold and a guard mocked her: Dont be afraid.