How to Be Alone

governing’ (freedom to). In order to achieve this second sort of freedom she suggests that you need a ‘genuine sense of what your life is and can become’. That is to say, you need a consciousness of yourself, and we have already seen how solitude enhances and develops that self-awareness which is the first step towards being self-governing.

Solitude can happen to anyone: we are all at risk.

‘You have to practise letting go of the inner chatter that can get in the way of what you want to accomplish,’

You are one of those courageous people who want to dare to live; and to do so believe you have to explore the depths of yourself, undistracted and unprotected by social conventions and norms.

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your own presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

You have an inchoate, inarticulate, groping feeling that there is something else, something more, something that may be scary but may also be beautiful.

most people do not have a single consistent style of responding, but are more introverted or extroverted in different contexts or moods,

The gods of our ancestors were, on the whole, gods of the wild places;

a mental store of beautiful or useful items offers security, frees one from complete dependence on oneself and appears to aid balance and sanity in solitude.