The Importance of Choosing Alone Time Sometimes
Quality time on your own as well as in community is crucial to your well-being
Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.
― bell hooks
Last Tuesday night I chose to take myself to dinner and a movie. I brought along a book which I read while I was waiting for my dinner, but I had no desire to split my attention any further. My phone stayed in my purse. I didn’t message, email, or call anyone. I didn’t consume snippets of other people’s thoughts about problems great and small, read their jokes, or look at their cute animals. I didn’t want to give away my attention as a means to fill the fifteen minutes between placing an order for chicken enchiladas con mole and having a comforting plate of food slid in front of me. I did not feel the need to escape myself.
While being alone can be painful and bring up feelings of loneliness and isolation, choosing to spend time alone can be calming and improve your experiences in community as well. I was tickled by my choice to take myself out as it had been a while, and it something I enjoy.
Once my dinner arrived, I closed my book and settled into my own thoughts about nothing in particular as the din of my fellow diners talking and eating rumbled under the Mexican dance music, and sharp clanks and hisses from the kitchen cut through it all. Neon colored lights beckoned me to consider all the types of margaritas on offer and I thought about which I might like if I felt like having one in the future. Despite the volume of the music and all the visual stimuli, I felt relaxed. Later, as I sat alone in the movie theater I spent ten minutes with my book closed in my lap, hanging out with my thoughts, waiting for the previews to start. A group of seniors behind me made fun of their friend who said “dungarees” instead of “jeans,” which transported me into a few minutes of enjoyable reverie. I really appreciated spending the evening with myself. This isn’t new for me, although it had been awhile since I made the time.
I am an only child. My childhood was filled with alone time. As one psychologist said in an interview with Lauren Sandler the author of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child and the Joy of Being One, “it has been found that only children tend to have stronger primary relationships with themselves. And nothing provides better armor against loneliness.” But that doesn’t mean folks cannot cultivate deep relationships with themselves as adults, even adults with siblings.
College was a novel experience for me as an only child. Suddenly I shared a bedroom and bathrooms with my closest confidants. I got used to a built-in social life at home. But after I graduated college in 2000, I lived on my own in Cambridge MA and had a limited social life for the first few months. I worked at Harvard’s rare book and manuscript library with mostly introverts old enough to be my parent or grandparent. My best friend lived two T stops away, but was often in Oklahoma visiting her fiance. I spent a lot of time alone, and sometimes I was lonely, but most of the time I just hung out with myself. It looked a little different from when I was a kid and would dance around to Madonna and draw pictures depicting trees, rainbows, and hearts — but not that different. I would put on music and cook for myself in my small kitchen; a couple of nights per week I stopped at my local video store on my way home from work and I rented mostly independent movies, and I watched them at home alone. I read voraciously. I made a lot of collages and I took self portraits with my 35mm camera. My favorite series was lit by refrigerator light. None of the art I made was for anyone else. I just liked doing it. I took myself to lunch at a Pho place in Harvard Square and I took myself to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Central Square. I would order chicken enchiladas con mole. Yes, that has been my order since then. Sometimes, I brought a book and a cell phone, but my simple Nokia was only for emergencies.
Now as an adult nearly a quarter century later, I have more responsibilities and a smartphone, and I can recognize that the shape of my post collegiate year in Cambridge made ample space for me to cultivate a deep friendship with myself as a young adult in the world. It was good for my wellness.
In my professional wellness circles we stress community action and systemic change as fundamental to people’s well being. We know that public health is inseparable from dismantling systemic bigotries like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and ageism. We do not think of wellness as an individualistic pursuit. We understand that thriving takes a village. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever choose to spend time alone.
We need quality time with our thoughts in order to bring our most authentic self into our work — both paid and unpaid. Alone time can also become a place where we find emotional regulation and stress reduction. This sort of quality time with our senses, thoughts, and feelings, when tolerable, is as fundamental to our well-being as being in community is; and it is fundamental to our communities’ well-being that its members have the capacity to self-reflect, regulate emotions, and create time to think things through. It is only from a place of periodic self-reflection, emotional regulation, and thoughtfulness that we can be in healthy relationships with one another. We need the benefits of alone time to be able to contribute to, and benefit from, community.
An Invitation to Consider Making Time To Hang Out With Yourself
I invite you to take a moment and settle into your seat or wherever you are. Notice your body and how you feel. Next, I invite you to consider making space for alone time in the next week. Then notice any shifts in your body and how you feel about that consideration.
If just the thought of taking some time to be alone felt distressing or worse, that is okay and frankly more common than I realized before I started writing this piece. If you have someone in your life from whom you seek support, you might want to consider bringing this bit of information to them.
If the thought of taking some time to yourself intrigued you, I suggest you make a plan to do something you enjoy on your own that won’t require your phone or computer for whatever you consider a doable amount of time. Thirty minutes is great and so is five. Put the plan in your calendar and when the time rolls around, try to honor your commitment to yourself. And when you are done, if it feels good to you, consider thanking yourself for taking time to honor a commitment to hang out with yourself.