"Which of my all important nothings should I tell you first?" ~ Jane Austen, in a letter to her sister

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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

I want to be alone

Sometimes. It's nice. And now I know I have a good reason for it.

I follow The Frisky on Facebook (warning: some of their posts can be R-rated) and today they posted about the power of being ALONE. I read the post today and I was like, yeah, right on!! This just feeds everything I've been saying for months - a room of one's own, time to think, time to focus and be introspective. This is all so important for our mental well-being - and now there's a study backing up that theory. (Not that it was my theory - just the natural progression of my personal evolution). 

In an effort to reduce all this clicking, here's the full text of that post:

When I was 13, I started locking myself in my lair and writing angsty poetry, which caused people (especially my parents) to assume that I was a lonely, depressed, misanthropic hermit. As it turns out, I was spending some very necessary and healthy time alone. A new study at Harvard University found that spending time alone is crucial for us to have fully-developed personalities. Sufficient quality time with numero uno has been linked to improved focus, memory, creativity, mood, and even better social skills when we finally emerge from our caves.
Why? Because other people take up a lot of space in our minds. Not only that, but they cloud our judgement. Being alone helps us engage in the process of high-level reflection and introspection. It helps us figure out what we really think about stuff. Double the need for solitude if you are highly creative, a prophet like Jesus, or a genius like Beethoven (or fancy yourself a writer). Anyone? Anyone?
Anyhow, I’m sold. Always have been. So what’s the problem? We have cultural stigma about solitude. A study done a few years back at the University of Massachusetts found that people actually feel good, more often than not, when they’re alone. But somehow, somewhere, solitude and loneliness became synonymous. Especially for teens who researchers found tend to sequester themselves when they feel crappy but emerge from isolation feeling slightly less crappy. Yeah, adolescence is tough. I guess that explains why my mom was always knocking on my door telling me to come out. If only I could have said to her, “I am forming my personality through meta-cognition” instead of shouting, “Go away!” and turning up Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock.”
The post was inspired by an article in the Boston Globe, here. Warning - it's long. Check out this quote from the article: 
Solitude has long been linked with creativity, spirituality, and intellectual might. The leaders of the world’s great religions — Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses — all had crucial revelations during periods of solitude. The poet James Russell Lowell identified solitude as “needful to the imagination;” in the 1988 book “Solitude: A Return to the Self,” the British psychiatrist Anthony Storr invoked Beethoven, Kafka, and Newton as examples of solitary genius.
And there's this little gem as well:
Teenagers, especially, whose personalities have not yet fully formed, have been shown to benefit from time spent apart from others, in part because it allows for a kind of introspection — and freedom from self-consciousness — that strengthens their sense of identity.
Hell yeah! I'm behind this 100%! I'm no expert, but I can only imagine that teenage minds are still forming the abilities to inductively and deductively reason. The more opportunity they get to exercise their minds naturally can only be a good thing, IMHO.

2 comments:

  1. Well well well. This is interesting for me. I was, for all intents and purposes, an alone only child. My sister came along when I was 14 so I grew up alone essentially. However I grew up REALLY alone. I think I'm probably the subject of a different study. Anyway, once i had kids (which was a Looooong time ago) I stopped being alone. Ever. In fact I can't tell you when I was last alone. I'm not even alone in the bathroom. And you're right, fostering creativity is hard when your brain space is occupied by so many other PEOPLE. Which explains why my blog sounds like I'm talking crazy talk to myself. Cause I am. I swear I'm intelligent. I think. I try to leave my kids ALONE. Mostly because they are moody and make me insane. Except the 11 year old. Last night he was talking to me using his buttcheeks like a mouth. Did I mention I'm never alone?

    Your blog is growing up quite nicely :)

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  2. "Double the need for solitude if you are highly creative, a prophet like Jesus, or a genius like Beethoven (or fancy yourself a writer"

    Apparently I have an octuple need for solitude.

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