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.

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.

In The Stations of Solitude, the philosopher Alice Koller defined freedom as ‘Not only having no restraints, but also being self-governing according to laws of your own choosing … where your choices spring from a genuine sense of what your life is and can become.’ In this short passage she moves from ‘no restraints’ (freedom from) to being

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

push your own boundaries in the expectation of having a new kind of fun. The rewards are a double freedom – the freedom of knowing yourself and pleasing yourself beyond your old comfort zone, and a deeper sense of achievement.

I use this little tent just whenever I feel the need to take off, alone, for whatever reason. For me, it works like a battery charger when I feel weighed down by the burdens of living in community and am dragging my feet. Actually I don’t use it very much, but knowing it’s there to use if I want to is sometimes enough in itself to bring a spring

In addition to looking at how you spend your leisure time, it is also interesting to look at your own ‘maintenance’ time. This is partly because household maintenance is something that not only can be, but often is, done alone. If you are trying to find time for solitude, you may already have it if you stop seeing vacuuming as a disagreeable task

a well-stocked mind enhances creativity,

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