Do You Like Spending Time Alone?

Complete this sentence: Spending time alone makes me feel ________.

In fact, complete it as many times as you like. You may have a variety of feelings about being alone, perhaps because sometimes you seek out solitude to relax and reset, while other times, no one else is available so it’s not as much of a choice.

In general, do you like spending time alone? Or would you rather avoid it?

In the Opinion essay “Embracing the Joys of Solitude in the New Year,” Jessica Grose writes about why she worries society has become “too fixated on the idea of loneliness as something intolerable and often negative.” She begins:

One of my most cherished memories from elementary school is visiting the Hermit’s Grave, a local historical landmark in our small town in New York State. My fourth-grade class trooped through the woods and used wax paper to rub the recluse Johann Wilhelm Stolting’s tombstone. Stolting — also known as the Hermit of Irvington or the Hermit of Ardsley — was an eccentric 19th-century German immigrant who slept in a coffin, spoke seven languages and supported himself by selling homemade buttons.

He lived until he was nearly 80, and even though a New York Times article from 1885 makes him sound like an absolute crank, he was also admired by the local villagers. “The people say that Stolting is a shrewd old fellow in managing his peculiar affairs in his peculiar way. He hates the city, and glories in the independence of his lonesome existence in the country.”

The Hermit has stayed with me because I found him aspirational — I know this was probably weird for a fourth grader, but stay with me. He was living his best, solitary life in his little wooded hut with his little coffin bed.

I still think about him once a month or so, because a small part of me craves my own modern version of that extreme solitude. I probably couldn’t be as physically isolated, nor would I want it to be — I hate nature, so living in the woods would be tough. But what I’m searching for is time alone, in my own head and in interior space, removed from other people’s thoughts and wants. And I worry that we’ve become a culture that is too fixated on the idea of loneliness as something intolerable and often negative.

In a prescient 2009 essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education, William Deresiewicz described the way in which the immediate and far-flung social connectivity that the internet enabled created a generation that “lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude” — and he believed that “The more we keep aloneness at bay, the less are we able to deal with it and the more terrifying it gets.”

Just as I have questioned the hyper-focus and tracking of happiness, I wonder if some of us would be better off embracing loneliness as a normal feeling that we all experience from time to time, rather than necessarily being pathological.

Students, read the entire essay and then tell us:

• What is your reaction to what you just read? Can you relate to Ms. Grose’s desire to be “removed from other people’s thoughts and wants”? Do you ever seek “space away from both the digital and urban noise” of your life?

• How much of an average day or week do you spend alone? How important is this time to you? What do you do when you’re on your own? Do you have too little time alone, too much or just enough?

• The essay quotes William Deresiewicz, who wrote that the internet created a generation that “lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude.” Do you have a hard time being alone? When you are, do you often pick up your phone for something to do or some way to connect?

• Do you think that social media connects us or disconnects us? Can you think of a time when technology made you feel a sense of community? Has technology ever made you feel lonely?

• Ms. Grose writes, “I worry that we’ve become a culture that is too fixated on the idea of loneliness as something intolerable and often negative.” What do you think? Have we become too afraid of being alone? When do you think spending time on one’s own is beneficial, and when does it become a problem?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.