Solitude and Idleness

Do try this at home

Something not so obvious that I’ve been thinking about lately is that writing is the most solitary form of creation. By solitary I mean that the act itself does not elicit any response from the medium. A blank sheet of paper or a computer screen will not respond to your writing on it; it’ll merely show it back to you. Your subconscious will then elaborate that and ignite a process of thought revelation and/or refinement that won’t happen otherwise. 

Other forms of creation like drawing, painting, or sculpting may be seen as solitary too and, to a certain extent, they are. But the immediate visual impact of what you just made, even in its primordial form, generates a natural response that sparks a back-and-forth mental process similar to a dialogue. 

This happens because reading is a semi-miraculous human invention made possible by the plasticity of our brain. Processes like language, vision, and cognition are naturally part of our genetic programming, but we were never meant to read. And so six thousand years ago our brain started to create connections between parts that were there for other reasons and made a new circuit for reading (or decoding) very simple symbols. 

Text on a page, therefore, won’t say anything back to you which is not what’s in the text itself. Because that text is you, there’s no dialogue that can be initiated. Painting on a canvas, for example, is unpredictable in that it does tell you something which may be miles away from what you had in mind when you started brushing, and so a dialogue begins. And your brain is genetically equipped to capture that conversation. It’s a less solitary form of creation. 

Music sits at the other extreme of the solitude spectrum -- when you create music, the instrument responds instantly, and that conversation may take you to unknown, often unexpectedly beautiful, places. 

Who knows whether this whole solitude paradigm makes sense? I’m not saying that solitary is bad and non-solitary is good. I happen to love solitary. In East of Eden, for example, John Steinbeck famously wrote “All great and precious things are lonely”.

I would venture to say that more solitary is equal to more difficult, but these are just my random, unbridled thoughts. Nothing scientifically proven (except that reading is unnatural). You might argue that text on a page, too, will in fact respond to you and produce a dialogue, and that, therefore, writing isn’t the most solitary form of creation. But I (respectfully) view that as a stretch. 

I like being alone, it’s my favorite way of spending time. Maybe that’s why I like writing so much. Most of all, though, I like solitude because I can be idle.

Our culture rewards doing things. If we want to be socially accepted, we cannot be idle. And it’s hard to say who we are without saying what we do. Next time you’re called to say what you do, try with “I mostly stare at a white wall and think”, and see what happens. Usually, one of two things: 1) they keep talking to you because they think you’re funny, but have zero credibility; 2) they stop talking to you because you have zero credibility, and you’re not even funny.

Yet doing nothing is the only time when thoughts are allowed to wander freely and drift towards what eventually shapes into ideas. I’m always thinking my best when I look out the window or lay down and stare at the ceiling. Or when I’m traveling by train: I used to take so much stuff to read  with me but now I’d rather watch the world outside go by in an accelerated motion. And it’s not just me saying that idleness is good for your thoughts: there are studies that confirm that. One of them even claims that not only “doing nothing”, but also “being bored” can be of great value to the creative process.

But let me curb your enthusiasm here: idleness is not easy. It’s not something we just decide to do, there’s no idleness switch to toggle in the back of our head. It’s a state we get into naturally, or else nothing happens. The reason why many cannot see the benefits of doing nothing -- and often fiercely oppose it -- is that they view it as something to be ashamed of. They feel guilty of non-productiveness. And apparently this is an unconscious process -- because our society has so ingrained in us the culture of doing things to be worthy of acceptance, it’s become difficult for us to let go of everything and get in a real, true and honest state of idleness. So we need to learn (or re-learn) to be naturally idle.

For me, writing is a process that benefits from idleness. I need to do nothing for a little while and then return to the page to generate some written words. They magically materialize after I’ve let my thoughts wander freely, even to unrelated places. I don’t know what happens, but that’s the way it works. What I do know is that for it to happen I have to give myself permission to just be. 

Doing nothing is associated with laziness, waste of time, lack of ambition, boredom. It’s “down” time, where you’re just not productive. And you want to make such down time as short as possible. But what is not immediately evident is that idleness is essential to nurture new insights, create, and invent. It’s one of the most productive states we could be in, where what’s stimulated is the productivity of the mind, not of the hands.

Einstein was known for staring into space for hours, Newton understood the law of gravity sitting under an apple tree, Archimedes discovered the law of buoyancy while taking a bath in his tub, and Michelangelo took year-long pauses while working on the David. 

Albert Camus wrote “Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre”, and I guess there’s no better way to put it.

Solitude and idleness go hand in hand; I’ve yet to meet someone who likes solitude but doesn’t like idleness, or the other way around. I think that society should do more to lift the negative stigma associated with these two states. It’s good and useful to be alone and idle, and as far as I’m concerned, idleness should be even encouraged in the workplace. But you could be sectioned in a mental institution for proposing that. 

So, let’s keep it quiet for now and entertain this thought in solitude.