Multitude or Solitude?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 614, 16 March 1929, Page 23

Multitude or Solitude?

In Which is One Happiest?

i ! If you say you like being alone, people look at you , i as though there were something wrong with you. i j 1

It depends on tlie one. “It’s not the j time or the place,” in fact, “but the | one who is there.” Many people have an absolute horror I of being alone. Solitude, to them, is j an unnatural state; to he happy alone, I so they say, you must be either a mis- j anthrope, a misogynist, a scholar, or simply a bom hermit. To say the least of it, you must be highly eccentric. There is something unhealthy in liking to be alone; and then the word “morbid,” which we have really been expecting ever since the beginning of the conversation, comes trotting along.

;It is, apparently, morbid to enjoy one's own company. The normal, healthy human being likes to commu--1 nicate his thoughts to his friends; he | likes to go for walks with them, to j play games with them, to see their i faces round a dinner table. | The idea of an empty house makes him shudder. He would rather be with someone he doesn’t particularly like than with nobody at all. And if | you say that you like being alone, i people look at you as though there ; tvere something wrong with you. j “Morbid,” they think, even if they do 1 not say it; “that’s what’s the matter with you.” A Case for Solitude ! And, indeed, it is not very easy to j make out a ease for solitude. It is a taste, a question of temperament; and I tastes and temperaments cannot be ; logically defended. They exist, and ! that is all there is to be said about it. j easier to attack than to defend. I The idea of an empty house makes him shudder. He would rather be with someone he doesn’t particular!}' like than Avitli nobody at all. I know exactly what the opponents of solitude will say to me, Avhen the topic comes up. “But what on earth do you do all day by yourself?”—that is the first exclamation. “Well,” I say, “I like reading.” “But you can’t read all day!” | “Well, I like gardening." “But when it rains?” ! “Well, I like thinking. I like doing

j nothing at all. I’m like tlie old rustic, i you see,’' I say, in a final burst of ex--1 asperation. “ ‘Sometimes I sits and j thinks, and sometimes I just sits.’ ” j Still, I see that they are not con- 1 vinced. So then I carry the war into , the enemy’s camp. Those Famous Conversations “What about these famous conversations of yours, anyway?” I say. “How often do you tell e»ach other what you really think? What about the hours you spend in mere humbug or casual chatter? “I like a good argument as much

as anybody, but perpetual contact i with a lot of chattering magpies is | enough to unfit anyone for argument. ; , One gets so bewildered that one can j no longer distinguish between one’s j own Ideas and other people’s. “Espeically after a party. At a \ | party one hears so many voices that I I one wants to put one’s hands over j j one’s ears, and sees so many faces j I that one can scarcely recognise one’s j ! own face in a looking glass. “Now, I like parties, once in a way. But after them I want to come home alone and put myself together again. I dislike the sensation of being shivered into a lot of little bits. Besides, in contact with one’s fellows one empties one’s little jugful of vitality and ideas. It is only in solitude and quiet | that it gets the chance to fill up ! I again, even to the brim.” A Form of Flattery j But I see that it is no good, for all j j that I get is a pitying look. Hardly anybody seems to understand the exhilaration of being alone. (Partly, J I think, because most people confuse I solitude with loneliness.) j Solitude is a form of flattery; if i one can stand it at all, it suggests a i self-reliance, a self-sufficiency, | Avhich is very pleasing to human j A r anity. Yet I protest against the idea that ! the hermit is necessarily an egoist; |he may even be an artist, shaping I life and the world into a pattern \of his own creation, for solitude is a mode of life which must be con- | ducted with great skill if we are to ’ make a success of it. i Probably the solution lies in com- | | promise. Solutions usually do. And J jin contrasts. Nothing makes one I j fonder of one’s firends than to have I been deprived of them for a certain j | period.