“Both loneliness and solitude are about yearning to make connections, but there is an important difference. Solitude is a yearning to connect with one’s inner self in order to deepen self-knowledge; it prevents one from becoming emotionally and spiritually overwhelmed by the pressures and desires of others. So there must be a balance between the yearning to be connected to others and the inner journey that is solitude. Charlotte Brontë brilliantly used her novels’ characters to decipher her own experiences of loneliness and solitude. For psychiatrist Anthony Storr, the yearning to connect with one’s inner self ‘promotes self-understanding and contact with those inner depths of being which elude one in the hurly-burly of day-to-day life.’ Solitude calls for courage to go against society’s disdain of those who seek it, as they are often thought to be rather odd and antisocial. Yet solitude can be a frightening, even terrifying, experience. It means blocking off the noisy chattering world within and around oneself. Not easy! As Michael Harris writes, ‘The naked self … is a bogeyman. Yet facing up to it can eventually become a numinous encounter.’ St. Augustine, at one point, describes how he avoided the rich experience of solitude by escaping into worldly pleasures: ‘And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made… . The lovely things kept me far from you.’ Thomas Merton, when reflecting on the need for solitude in contemporary times, writes that ‘all men need enough solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard … If a man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own solitude, he ceases to be a true person.’”
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