I’m doing fine coming out “the other side” of over a five week long medical crisis. I’ll spare you all the details, but I had to go by ambulance to the ER with a vicious gall bladder attack. I was in the hospital a week before they could do surgery due to my being on blood thinners. The surgery, intended to be laparoscopic, turned out to require a major incision because the gall bladder was so inflamed and infected. I spent another week in hospital and another in rehab and have been home for two weeks now, ten days of which I had the assistance of my friend, Jim Thomas, who graciously drove all the way from Pennsylvania to be with me while my wife, Cathy, was at work and on choir tour. Progress is slow—patience is not one of my virtues—but sure. I have to remind myself that 83 is not a “quick bounce back” age!

That said, the following post is one I had begun to work on before that aforementioned medical adventure.

Loneliness and Solitude

While loneliness and solitude are not exclusive or particular to persons “of age”—as I will illustrate from a personal experience—they are, I think, heightened and often less easily distinguished and resolved as the aging process progresses. That said, the first thing to do is clarify the difference between solitude and loneliness.

At first glance, solitude and loneliness can look a lot alike. Both seem characterized, after all, by “aloneness,” by exclusion from the presence of other persons. But that apparent resemblance will not hold.

• Loneliness is marked by a sense of isolation. Of course it can happen when one is actually alone, but it’s also possible to be with other people and still feel lonely.
• Solitude is simply being alone without being lonely. It is a time when you provide yourself wonderful and sufficient company.

There is more to be said on the subject, of course, with reference to the process of aging, but first let me reminisce about my own experience of coming to terms with solitude and loneliness when I was a mere forty-five years old.

• My first marriage had broken up, I had left our comfortable home to my family and was living in a tiny “lean to” garage apartment. I had never in my life been alone! I had been with my parents, with roommates in college and graduate school, then with my wife and, eventually, children. I didn’t know how to be alone and every evening when work tasks allowed I was finding friends to be with and, failing that, even “bar hopping.” 
• Among my friends was the woman who years later would become my wife but at this point neither of us foresaw that possibility. One evening, after stopping by my apartment for a chat and a glass of wine, she remarked on my need to be “out and about” every night and in essence said to me, “You’re going to have to discover the difference between solitude and loneliness. Until you learn to enjoy your own company, no one else is going to either.”

It was a “Eureka moment!”—I “saw the light,” “the penny dropped” and I did indeed, working on it over time, learn to treasure the gift of solitude, as I still do.

No doubt there are others who, earlier in life, also came comfortably to terms with solitude as a peaceful, satisfying, and refreshing time of enjoying the quiet with a consciousness of inner richness. What, then, is the relevance of the issues of solitude and loneliness to the process of aging?

• Perhaps one inevitability as we grow older is that our circle of friends and family tends to grow smaller as we lose more people in our age group to such eventualities as incapacitating disabilities, cognitive impairment, or death.  As a result, opportunities for gatherings with friends may become less and time spent alone may increase. If solitude is something we have learned to cultivate as a time to renew ourselves, something that replenishes us, this may not be a problem. If not, the specter of loneliness may hover over our lives. With regard to family, some might point out that if we have children and grandchildren our family life may be more rather than less populated and opportunities for enriching interaction may increase rather than decrease. This is obviously true for some but not for all and even for those who enjoy time spent with such expanded family contacts, much of what we experience in the aging process is not easily shared with nor likely to be understood by those whose younger lives cannot possibly identify with ours.
• And then there is that more insidious breed of loneliness and perhaps its most bitter form—a state of discontent marked by a sense of estrangement, an awareness of excess aloneness that the presence of other people cannot resolve.  Frederick Buechner described it this way: “To be lonely is to be aware of an emptiness which it takes more than people to fill. It is to sense that something is missing which you cannot name.” And yet if that sense if deficiency is to be addressed then one must be willing to try to name it. And that, in my judgment, returns us to reflection that can only be found in the state of solitude because it is there we have the possibility to discover, or rediscover, and to cultivate that inner self in whose company we find both comfort and a state of peacefulness that stems from an experience of inner richness. It is what Paul Tillich expressed so well: “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.”
• Since I make no claim to expertise in the deeper levels of the psychology of loneliness, I return to where I began and that is to personal reflections on my discoveries of the values of solitude in overcoming “the pain of being alone.”
  • While my own battle with solitude and loneliness did not include the experience of “loneliness in the crowd,” it would seem obvious that a low sense of self worth—i.e. “I don’t deserve to be included in this group”—is at least one of the complicating factors. Religious or psychotherapeutic reasons and remedies notwithstanding, this would seem at some point to require a return to solitude and the discovery of a positive and constructive state of engagement with oneself.
  • Solitude is a time that can be used for reflection, for inner searching, for personal growth. Deep reading, for example, or merely focused reading for enjoyment or even “escapism” requires solitude. Thinking and creativity also tend to be enhanced by solitude and although the beauty of nature can be experienced and enjoyably shared in the company of others, I have personally had my richest memories of being caught up in a rapturous engagement with nature while I was alone with my overwhelmed senses and my captivated mind.

And so I return to where I began: gratefully embracing the joy of solitude that is devoid of loneliness. It is, for me, a means of enjoying the quiet from which we can draw sustenance. It refreshes and renews. Solitude replenishes us.

Thanks to the following articles for some helpful insights:

“What Is Solitude,” Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today, July 1, 2003.

“Here’s Why You’re Confusing Solitude With Loneliness,” Zaid K. Dahhaj