Me, Myself and I

I go away once, maybe twice a year on a short holiday. I travel on my own, set my own pace and agenda. I relish these times. To think I must have aloneness - solitude. Sometimes, I go away so I can stop thinking. The world is full of noise. Ever present music, news of no import whatsoever, and the general yakity-yak which I am guilty of being party to. My recent trip to Fort Lauderdale was a trip to help me to stop worrying and thinking and to re-charge my physical and psychic energies.

I've often had people ask me who I was going away with. When the answer has been nobody, I have usually encountered a worried look or a comment suggesting the strangeness of someone contemplating wanting to be alone with themselves. Often, people will ask, "what do you do on your own?" The answer is nothing (if I choose) or something exciting and different.

I just read an article from The Chronicle Review which looks at precisely this topic.

I once asked my students about the place that solitude has in their lives. One of them admitted that she finds the prospect of being alone so unsettling that she'll sit with a friend even when she has a paper to write. Another said, why would anyone want to be alone?

To that remarkable question, history offers a number of answers.