The Unexpected Gifts of Solitude

Eight weeks into Shelter in Place and possibly months before we can imagine fully emerging from our lairs, we find ourselves still physically isolated, and if we’re lucky, with significant unstructured time. Even if you’re used to working from home, it’s something new altogether.

But physical isolation, uncertainty and boredom inspire bold visions and radical achievements.

In 1962, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for what would become 27 years, 18 of them in solitary confinement on Robben Island. Despite the cruelty of the punishment, he used his time to better himself, learning Afrikaans, the language of his oppressors, to better understand them and to engage with his guards.

Twelve years after his release, he described what had kept him going: “We tried in our simple way to lead our life in a manner that may make a difference to those of others.” He returned from those years of hardship and isolation to lead his country out of Apartheid.

Nelson Mandela casts his vote in the 1994 South African election. Photo courtesy of
Paul Weinberg via Wikimedia

Pausing the day-to-day of modern life doesn’t come easily. Teamwork, busyness and groupthink are deeply embedded in our culture. Being alone gives us time to think about ourselves and what we’re doing with our lives — stark reminders of our mortality, whether we live our deepest values, and recognizing how little control we have over what happens to us. Yet we can control how we respond.

Human creativity often works best in isolation. In a 1934 profile of Nikola Tesla, the inventor of A/C electricity who spent much of his later years burrowed away in his 33rd floor apartment in New York, the inventor explained the richness of spending time alone: “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone — that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.”

Nikola Tesla sits in his laboratory in in his laboratory in Colorado Springs, December 1899. Photo by Dickenson V. Alley, via Wikimedia

We have already faced hardship and loss — and there will be more — , but there will also be gifts that come from this. As lockdowns loosen in the weeks ahead, so many of the old distractions will have disappeared. Shops will stay closed, entertainment venues dark and other enticements that kept us busy will be gone, sometimes permanently.

But we are most creative when we strip away those distractions — including overprescribed schedules — and give ourselves time and freedom to be and to imagine.

Sitting and thinking on Bernal Hill, San Francisco. © Caroline Gutman

Already, we are rising to the occasion. From organizing neighborhood window art projects (#onephillyart) to offering free virtual speaking and bread making classes, to contributing to Covid 19 research through online gaming, to housing ER nurses who can’t go home, there is no limit to the power of creativity, collectively. Using this time and energy to help others will be a salve. These crisis-learned skills will stay with us, as will our sense of being and purpose.

Small acts of kindness and generosity in the author’s neighborhood. © Caroline Gutman

In The Bell Jar, American author and poet Sylvia Plath writes, “My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.”

There is no better time than now. It is a chance to reset.

Covid-19-induced solitude could become a defining moment for our lives as we ourselves develop in ways that enrich the lives of others. As Nelson Mandela describes in his own return to society in The Long Walk to Freedom, “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” When we re-emerge from our COVID-19 shelters, we will be better versions of ourselves for having lived this.

Caroline Gutman is an independent photojournalist and the co-founder of Nu Market.

Divya Dhar is a physician and product manager at Google and contributed to this piece.

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