In the book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, the author writes about solitiude
“Solitude is about what’s happening in your brain, not the environment around you… a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.”
It means not simply being alone, but being alone with your thoughts. So watching TV or Netflix, reading a book or articles, listening to music or a podcast, even if alone, do not count as solitude – your mind is still receiving, as the author says, “input from other minds”.
It’s when one makes this distinction that one typically realises that such moments of solitude are rare, if they occur at all during a day. But this is also when one’s brain actively processes all the information it has consumed or been exposed to during the day – sleep being the only other time, and one is not really conscious then.
Typical of the work-hard-play-hard culture that’s become the norm, our antidote to total absorption in work or socialising has become meditation. While not at all a bad thing, it is as extreme a disconnection from work & play as our work & play itself has become. The big ocean between them is simply spending time not actively doing stuff – whether it is simply sitting or going on a walk. As part of the 30-day Reddit-Twitter isolation I’m going to resist the temptation to simply fill the time with more books, and try to spend some time by myself.