The Capacity for Successful Solitude
by Sherry Turkle
[Listen to Audio!]
 The capacity to be alone is the capacity to know enough about yourself and who you are, and be comfortable enough with that. That way, when you are with another person, you’re not trying to make that person into somebody you need them to be in order to buttress a fragile sense of your own self. You can actually turn to a person and see them as another person, and have a real relationship with them.
Now, the person who can’t do that is going to be one of these people who nobody wants to be with, because when you see them coming, you know that they’re going to use you to make themselves feel less terrifyingly alone. Those people are very lonely, because they can’t form relationships. They’re using other people as spare parts.
The capacity to be in a relationship requires the capacity for a genuine solitude. One of the gifts of a successful childhood is that you develop this capacity for successful solitude. And you learn it, paradoxically, by a caretaker being with you, but able to leave you a little bit of space.
I remember walks with my grandmother to Macy’s in Brooklyn. And we were just quiet together. Every once in a while there’d be a word, but we were just side by side in our thoughts, and sharing a thought once in a while, and you knew that there was someone there protecting you as you learned to think your own thoughts. People have many different models of what that was: sitting together sewing or reading or playing or giving a child a bath and letting them have the privacy of their thoughts. These are the moments of childhood where children are not abandoned, but they learn to be alone with. And that capacity means that when they come to other relationships, they can form them successfully. If instead of that, you put them in a baby bouncer that has a slot for an iPad or an iPhone or a laptop, they’re always mirrored in some other outside thing and they’re not brought back to their own self and their own resources and their own mind and their own imagination.
There’s a wonderful idea that you have to learn that the most interesting thing in the environment is your own mind. And if you never learn that, it’s not good.
About the Author: Excerpted from Sherry Turkle’s blog post: Relearning how to talk in the age of Smartphone addiction
Latest Community Insights  |
The Capacity for Successful Solitude
What does successful solitude mean to you? Can you share a personal experience of a time you experienced successful solitude with another person? What has helped you develop the successful solitude muscle? |
| Sara wrote: A beautiful reflection! Indigenous cultures have traditionally recognized & cultivated the art of solitude as exists even while immersed in community. An interesting dimension on this conce… |
| david doane wrote: Successful solitude means being able to be content and at peace while alone with myself. Being able to be happily alone is a prerequisite for successful relationship. When I can be happil… |
| Share/Read Your Reflections |
|
Awakin Circles:
Many years ago, a couple friends got together to sit in silence for an hour, and share personal aha-moments. That birthed this newsletter, and rippled out as Awakin Circles in 80+ living rooms around the globe. To join in Santa Clara this week, RSVP online.
Some Good News
Video of the Week
Kindness Stories
Global call with Anne Veh!
 Join us for a conference call this Saturday, with a global group of ServiceSpace friends and our insightful guest speaker. Join the Forest Call >>
About
Back in 1997, one person started sending this simple “meditation reminder” to a few friends. Soon after, “Wednesdays” started, ServiceSpace blossomed, and the humble experiments of service took a life of its own. If you’d like to start an Awakin gathering in your area, we’d be happy to help you get started.
|
Editor’s note: We often feel that we must give something of ourselves in order to express kindness and that generosity and kindness must go together. Although they often do go together, they don’t have to. Generosity usually involves giving something of ourselves – time or resources but kindness is simply the ability to show compassion and empathy. We need both. –Ameeta
Richard Whittaker
“If you just make a painting in an hour, two hours, four hours–anybody can make a beautiful painting! But then you don’t go through all the ups and downs, ‘Oh my god, I give up!’ If you never go through it you’re not at home. If you do you learn things. After a journey of ten years on one painting you know everything about painting!”
Serrato enjoys the shock people have when they enter his apartment full of thousands of pieces of art. He told me, “Cheech Marin was here. At the end of his visit he said, ‘Mr. Serrato, it was a pleasure meeting you. I have to introduce you to someone.’ I said, ‘Who is that?’ He said, ‘My psychiatrist!’ [laughs]
Sangha of Auspicious Companions 