The Difference Between the Pain and the Glory of Being Alone

Or, only those who have never experienced it confuse solitude with loneliness

I was browsing through YouTube yesterday, just watching random clips, when I stumbled upon a video of Louis C.K. from 2013. It really stuck with me.

He was chatting with Conan O’Brien about why he doesn’t let his daughters have cell phones. “I’m not raising kids; I’m raising the adults they’ll become.”

He said, and I’m rephrasing, If kids don’t look each other in the eye when they talk, they miss out on learning empathy. Kids can be mean, sure, but that’s part of growing up. When a kid says something hurtful like “You’re fat,” and then sees the pain in another child’s face, it teaches them a lesson. But when they send that same message via text, there’s no real reaction to see. They just think, “That was fun.” It’s like they’re missing the human connection.

Louis C.K. emphasised that we need to learn how to just be with ourselves. To do nothing. It sounds simple, but it’s so easy to get distracted. He put it beautifully when he said, “That’s what being a person is—sitting quietly and feeling that emptiness deep down.” That realisation that everything is temporary.

Sometimes, when we’re alone and not distracted, that sadness creeps in, like when you’re driving in silence. Life can feel overwhelmingly sad, and it’s wild to think that we’re so afraid of that loneliness that we’ll even text and drive just to escape it.

He shared a personal story about driving while listening to a Bruce Springsteen song that hit him hard. It brought up a wave of sadness, and his first instinct was to grab his phone and message someone, anything to avoid feeling that pain. But then, he stopped. He let the sadness wash over him. He pulled over and let himself cry. He called it a beautiful experience.

It made me think. When was the last time I allowed myself to feel something so raw? I’m a little ashamed to say I can’t remember.

Sadness can be poetic if we let it be. When you allow yourself to feel sad, your body eventually reacts in a way that makes you feel better. But we’re always trying to dodge sadness by reaching for our phones. In doing so, we miss out on the full spectrum of feelings. We end up feeling numb. And in the end, we die.

THE STRUGGLE TO FORM A STABLE SENSE OF SELF

Solitude isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about doing something that brings you back to yourself. Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, has argued that solitude is vital for introverts, who make up a large part of the population.

But Louis C.K. takes it further—solitude matters for everyone, even for extroverts. It’s in those quiet moments that you really get to know yourself. And learning how to be alone is one of the most important things every child needs to figure out.

When you can be comfortable in your own company, you can also see other people as separate, independent beings. You don’t need them to be anything for you. You can listen to them and truly hear them. This is why solitude is key to developing empathy. It lets you step into someone else’s shoes because you’re grounded in your own.

When we’re alone with our thoughts, we activate a part of the brain called the default mode network (DMN). The DMN is a network of brain regions that shows increased activity when a person is at rest and not focused on the external environment. It is particularly active during introspective tasks, such as daydreaming, recalling memories, and thinking about the future. It helps us build a strong sense of who we are by reflecting on our past.

Without solitude, we struggle to form a stable sense of self. But solitude is harder to find in a world where we’re always turning to our devices. People who grew up with social media often say they don’t really feel like themselves unless they’re posting or texting or forwarding memes. It’s like they need to share a thought to even process it. This is the “I share, therefore I am” mindset. It’s as if they need to send a text just to feel something.

This way of living can create a false self, one built around how we think others will react. Henry David Thoreau warned about this, saying we live too “thickly,” constantly responding to the world instead of getting to know ourselves first. And back then there wasn’t even internet or social media to steal your attention.

Creativity often comes from solitude. When we let our minds drift, we set our brains free. We’re at our most creative when there’s no pressure to react.

Most modern culture tends to celebrate being social, believing that the best ideas come from group sessions like “brainstorming” or “groupthink.” But research shows that new ideas are more likely to appear when people think alone. Solitude is where we learn to trust our imagination.

THERE’S SOMETHING IN US THAT WANTS TO ESCAPE SOLITUDE

Hannah Arendt, the author of books such as The Origins of Totalitarianism, On Violence, and On Revolution, talks about solitude as being able to keep yourself company. “You’re not lonely—you’re with yourself.” For her, real thinking happens in solitude. “It’s a conversation between me and myself, but this conversation always remembers the world of others because they’re represented in the self that we talk to.”

The existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich put it beautifully: “Language created the word ‘loneliness’ for the pain of being alone, and the word ‘solitude’ for the glory of being alone.”

Loneliness is painful, born out of a need for closeness, especially in childhood. But solitude—the ability to be content and creative on your own—grows out of strong human connections. If we never experience solitude, we start to confuse it with loneliness. It’s a sign that we’re missing out. If we don’t know the richness of solitude, all we know is the fear of being alone.

Of course, solitude isn’t always easy or pleasant. It can be uncomfortable. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.” But he also admitted that there’s always something in us that wants to escape solitude. Research shows that they might feel bad during those quiet moments, but in the long run, solitude helps them grow. Without it, in a world of constant connection, we may experience moments that feel exciting but lives that feel empty.

If you ask anyone about spending time alone with their thoughts, most would say it’s not something they look for. As soon as we’re by ourselves, we reach for our phones—no matter where we are. Many even sleep with our phones, checking messages in the middle of the night. We never take a walk without their devices. We never learned to value time alone.

CREATIVE MINDS VALUE SOLITUDE

Mozart once said that his best ideas came when he was completely alone and at peace, whether on a walk or late at night when he couldn’t sleep. Kafka believed you didn’t even need to leave your room—just sit quietly, and the world would reveal itself. The writer Thomas Mann saw solitude as the birthplace of originality and beauty, while Picasso insisted that serious work required great solitude.

These poetic reflections are echoed by research. Susan Cain highlights a study, “The Coding War Games,” where researchers looked at the work of over 600 programmers across 92 companies. What they found was clear: the best performers had more privacy. They worked for companies that gave them control over their space, freedom from interruptions, and the privacy they needed to focus. It’s no surprise that privacy fosters creativity. When we step back from the distractions around us, we can think more deeply about our own thoughts. Psychologists call this meta-cognition. Everyone can do it, but it needs to be nurtured. The risk we face today is that constant connection is eroding this ability.

A vice president of a Fortune 500 company once spoke about a time he had to write an important presentation. He asked his assistant to shield him from any interruptions for three hours—no emails, no phone calls, no distractions, unless it was an emergency. She did as he asked, but instead of finding peace, he found anxiety. He couldn’t concentrate and felt panicked. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said, “but I felt like no one cared about me, no one loved me.”

His story is a perfect example of what I call “disconnection anxiety.” We’ve become so used to being constantly connected that when we finally get time alone, we don’t know what to do with it. People say they feel bored, but it’s really anxiety pulling them back to their phones. They want to feel connected, to be on someone’s radar. That’s what our messages tell us: someone, somewhere, is thinking about us.

This is a vicious cycle. The more we turn to our phones during moments of boredom, the less we know how to explore our inner world. And the more we rely on that quick hit of connection, the less comfortable we become with solitude. To reclaim it, we need to learn to see boredom as a chance to turn inward, not as a reason to seek stimulation elsewhere. It’s about breaking the habit, even just some of the time, and choosing to stay with ourselves.

LITERARY FICTION BUILDS EMPATHY

Today, classrooms are filled with students who struggle to connect with one another. Teachers are increasingly concerned that their students lack empathy. This disconnect seems to be related to students’ difficulty in being alone with their thoughts. The question looms: if students can’t spend time by themselves, how can they possibly make time for others?

To address this, many educators are trying to slow down the pace of their classrooms. They’re striving to create a sense of “breathing room” where students can reflect and engage meaningfully. However, they face a significant challenge: students find it hard to sit still and concentrate. Their patience is wearing thin. Whereas there used to be just a handful of students resistant to longer assignments, now even the most driven students push back at the sight of a reading list that includes more than one lengthy book. We adults are no better.

Our brains are wired for conversation, but we can also train them to handle deep reading—the kind that requires focus on a long, complex story with layered characters. This is exactly the kind of reading a lot students today don’t want to do.

For generations, teachers told their students that reading fiction was “good for them.” It always sounded like something teachers say, but now we have proof. Literary fiction actually helps build empathy. Studies show it improves the ability to read emotional cues, like facial expressions. The teachers were right all along. You start by identifying with characters in a novel, and that ability transfers to real life.

Think of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Readers (both young and old) relate to Harry’s journey from loneliness and neglect to finding friendship and belonging at Hogwarts. They feel the excitement of his discoveries and triumphs, cheering for him as he battles against dark forces and uncovers his true identity.

Literary fiction stretches the imagination, helping readers understand the complexities of character and emotion. It’s a lot like conversation. Both require imagination, attention, and quiet time.

APPS DESIGNED TO KEEP YOU ON APPS

How does technology keep us so close, so tethered, that we turn to it instead of looking inward? It keeps us in what’s called the “machine zone.” Anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll, in her work on gamblers and their slot machines, describes the machine zone as a mental space where people blur with the machine. One gambler even said, “I’m almost hypnotised into being that machine.” In this state, it’s not about the money or even winning or losing. What matters is staying with the machine, staying in that zone.

Technology critic Alexis Madrigal talked about the “Facebook zone” as a lighter version of this in 2013. Today, there are lots of zones — TikTok, Instagram, Snap, YouTube, Netflix, you name it.

There’s a helpful comparison between the Facebook zone and what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” Flow happens when you’re doing something challenging but within your skill set, like skiing down a mountain. You feel connected, engaged, and you grow from it. The machine zone, on the other hand, is the dark side of flow. Instead of growth, it leads to entrapment and repetition. And the end, you feel crappy and anxious instead of great.

Doomscrolling and cycling through apps pulls us away from other things we used to love—taking a walk, drawing, reading. We don’t make time for those activities anymore. And while we know we’re losing out, we find it hard to break away from our phones and aren’t sure we even want to.

Apps are designed to keep you on apps. The more of your downtime they take up, the less time you have to be with yourself.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO ESCAPE TO A REMOTE CABIN

Today, we have a different idea of solitude. For many of us, being alone means being online. We don’t daydream anymore, we just “chill” by either watching Netflix or aimlessly searching the web. It’s daydreaming 2.0. But it doesn’t do the same thing as daydreaming. In fact, we use the web or Netflix or social media as our “safety mechanism” to avoid letting our mind wander. Phones are like an “insurance policy” against boredom.

This is the reality for so many people today. Being alone, even with close friends, means turning to a screen. Conversation feels like too much effort, and silence is unbearable without a phone to fill the space.

We often think of creativity as a sudden burst of inspiration. You know, that moment when an idea strikes us like a lightbulb turning on. But the truth is, those bright ideas usually don’t come out of nowhere. They’re often the result of a lot of hard work happening behind the scenes.

Henri Poincaré, the French mathematician and philosopher, knew this well. He talked about how what seems like a “lightbulb” moment is really just the final piece of a long, unconscious process. He described how, when faced with a tough question, we often struggle at first. It’s frustrating. We might sit down to tackle the problem, only to hit a wall. Then, we take a break, clear our minds, and when we return, suddenly, the solution appears.

This makes me think about the early computer scientists’ dreams of creating machines to handle the mundane tasks, leaving us humans free to engage in more profound and creative work.

Vannevar Bush envisioned a device called the Memex in 1945. He thought it could manage our logical processes, giving us more time to explore our creativity. Ironically, as we get closer to this vision, it feels like we’re overwhelmed instead. We’re bombarded with so much information that it’s hard to keep up. In the rush to stay connected, we often forget to pause and think.

We’re rushed and impatient, eager for quick answers but struggle to appreciate the process. It’s as if we’re all waiting for that lightbulb moment without allowing ourselves the necessary time for the deeper, hidden work to happen.

The psychologist Jonathan Schooler has shown that letting our minds wander is crucial for creativity. He points out that our minds are restless, always seeking something interesting to focus on. In moments of quiet, we all feel that pull toward our devices. Every notification feels urgent, like a threat we must address immediately. We chase after new information and social connections, often at the expense of nurturing our deeper selves. But daydreaming? That’s where we find our long-term creativity. It helps us build a stable identity and discover fresh solutions. To foster innovation, we must slow down, let our thoughts wander, and spend time alone.

This starts with reclaiming our ability to be alone with our thoughts. When we instinctively reach for our phones to escape those quiet moments, we should pause and ask ourselves why. Are we avoiding anxiety? Maybe we’re running from an idea that will require hard work, or a question that needs time to unpack.

The social critic William Deresiewicz reminds us that in our online world, we often lose the chance to think for ourselves. Being in control is about gathering our thoughts into a single focus rather than getting lost in the noise of distractions.

We don’t have to escape to a remote cabin to find this clarity. Even a little solitude can help us hear our own thoughts and create space for reflection. In this noisy world, taking the time to be alone with ourselves is more valuable than ever.