Solitude as a Positive Experience: Empowerment and Agency

Abstract

What makes solitude a positive experience? What distinguishes experiences of solitude from experiences of loneliness? We review some of the literature on the benefits of solitude, focusing on freedom, creativity, and spirituality. Then, we argue that the relationship between agent and environment is an important factor in determining the quality of experiences of solitude. In particular, we find that solitude may support a person’s sense of agency, expanding the possibilities for action that a person has, and creating the conditions for authenticity. We describe a phenomenology of solitude, based on a study that explores the nature of experiences of loneliness and solitude in a religious community. One finding is that solitude is characterised by presence, whereas loneliness is characterised by absence. Another finding is that solitude can contribute to a sense of empowerment that enables agents to pursue and achieve the goals they find valuable.

1. Solitude and loneliness

In a recent article in Psyche, writer Susanne Sener describes her experience of living alone in a cabin on a mountain in Colorado, for twenty-eight years:

I didn’t move to the mountain with the goal of being alone. I moved here because the cabin was an affordable place to live while I fulfilled a four-year teaching assignment at a university 20 miles away. The resulting solitude was an unexpected discovery, then an unexpected benefit. At the end of those four years, I left my career and a brief marriage because mountain life was even more appealing than either of those.¹

What are the unexpected benefits of solitude? How can we make sense of solitude as a positive experience? There are two different constructs related tobeing alone, solitude and loneliness. However, being alone is not a necessary condition for solitude or loneliness, as one can experience solitude or feel lonely in the presence of others. Understanding the benefits of solitude is part of the same project as understanding the differences between the experience of solitude and the experience of loneliness. Solitude has been regarded as healthy aloneness whilst loneliness is sometimes described as pathological aloneness, for instance when it is linked to depression.² Due to its potentially harmful nature, loneliness has been the object of much psychological research whereas solitude has been relatively neglected. The research on solitude that is available suggests that solitude is experienced positively because the freedom it affords facilitates creativity, reflection, and spirituality.

Solitude has been described as a state of relative social disengagement – disengagement from the immediate demands of other people – and is usually characterized by decreased social inhibitions and increased freedom to choose mental and physical activities.³ Sener remarks on the freedom she gained by moving away from the city: «Mostly I am still, basking in the absolute silence, unobserved by others, answering only to the mountain and to myself. The freedom is absolute, and it is exquisite». It is important to distinguish temporary disengagement from society’s demands from more permanent states of isolation. Hannah Arendt, for instance, thought that some degree of social disengagement is necessary for pursuing creative endeavours but also argued that extreme cases of isolation may have devastating consequences.⁴

From a philosophical perspective, there is a long-standing controversy concerning solitude and its desirability. Some philosophers, like David Hume, regard solitude as unpleasant and potentially dangerous, because it deprives people of the conviviality and socialising that would contribute to their ideas being debated and improved. Other philosophers, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, see solitude as the refuge from which intellectual achievements can be pursued, far from the demands of society and the vulgarity of crowds.⁵

From a broad social perspective, the benefits of solitude are often thought to outweigh its costs.⁶ For instance, solitude can reduce the need for following patterns of behaviour to which one feels pressure to conform. Stillness, silence, and freedom from the constraints imposed by determined social roles are all themes we shall address further in the paper, as well as the idea that solitude is characterised by the presence of deeper connections and by a positive impact on the person’s sense of agency which makes the person feel empowered. Indeed, in the case of beneficial solitude we started with, Sener values her deep connection with nature, personified in the mountain where she lives, and she does not lament the absence of other connections, although people often expect her to. Moreover, she seems to regard her many achievements and accomplishments as goals that she managed to fulfil thanks to her solitary life and not in spite of it.

In the paper we focus on the features of solitude that make it a positive experience – and that distinguish solitude from loneliness. In section 2, we review the literature on freedom, creativity, and spirituality as potential benefits of solitude. In section 3, we discuss how the quality of the experience of solitude depends on the complex relationship between personal characteristics and features of the environment. In section 4, we illustrate the previously described features of the experience of solitude by reference to an empirical study Valeria Motta conducted in a group of religious women.

We conclude that expanding possibilities for action and removing the constraints set by determined social roles may enable people to start a journey whose end is to find a self that feels authentic. This may result into appreciating the presence of deeper connections in their lives and feeling empowered to make their own contributions to the goals they set for themselves.

2. Benefits of solitude

In this section we review some of the reasons why solitude is described as a positive experience. Solitude has been linked to freedom, creativity, and spirituality. ⁷

2.1. Freedom

The distinction between positive and negative freedom is useful for understanding how solitude can be experienced positively.⁸ Negative freedom is understood as freedom from constraints, whereas positive freedom is freedom to engage in the desired activities – it depends on the presence of resources, whether internal (such as education) or external (such as financial security). The presence of others can either impose constraints on agents or provide the necessary resources for agents to pursue their goals.

Several studies indicate that having to coordinate with others can be experienced as a constrain. This suggests that solitude can be appreciated as a source of negative freedom. For instance, your experience of observing a painting in an art gallery changes when another person walks up.⁹ You become conscious not only of the painting you are observing, but also of yourself as a viewer. Solitude can minimize forms of intrusive self-consciousness by reducing the immediate demands of experiencing oneself as the object of another person’s thoughts and actions. Other studies have shown that people have decreased self-awareness when they are alone.¹⁰

Agents may seek solitude to reduce the possibilities of experiencing themselves as the object of someone else’s actions and thoughts. But they may also choose to withdraw from social interactions or become immersed in nature to benefit from stillness, silence, and space gaining more autonomy, privacy, and choice with respect to their thoughts and actions.¹¹ This suggests that solitude can be appreciated as a source of positive freedom. In two different studies, university students¹² and backpackers¹³ indicated that freedom of choice with respect to their own actions and thoughts was among the most important benefits of their experience of solitude. We will see that solitude has been associated with conditions that facilitate selfreflection, self-discovery, and even self-transformation.

One important caveat to the discussion of freedom as a benefit of solitude is that people often report increased negative mood when they are alone.¹⁴ This reminds us that «to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by solitude, a person must be able to turn a basically terrifying state of being into a productive one»¹⁵ and that «(positive) freedom to engage in a particular activity requires more than simply a freedom from constraints or interferences: it requires the capacity to use solitude constructively».¹⁶

The fact that mood may decrease without compromising the overall benefits of the experience is not unique to solitude and has been observed in other experiences which share some features with solitude. For instance, in the psychological literature on optimism,¹⁷ researchers sometimes distinguish a type of optimism that increases mood but does not bring additional benefits (when the person denies a crisis or problem instead of facing it) and a type of optimism that does not necessarily enhance mood but supports effective coping (when the person sees the crisis or problem as a challenge to overcome). We shall see that the way in which solitude and optimism support agency can be viewed as a similarity between the two experiences.

Other experiences that share features with solitude are self-transcendent experiences, «transient mental states marked by decreased self-salience and increased feelings of connectedness».¹⁸ Participants whose sense of self loses its sharp boundaries can have pleasant experiences with long-lasting positive effects (awe and wonder) but also terrifying experiences which are symptomatic of mental health problems, such as derealisation.¹⁹

2.2. Creativity

Pop culture associates creativity with solitude: the scientist in the laboratory, the painter in the studio, the writer in a cabin in the woods (similar to Sener’s case, the one we started with). Developing creative talents such as practising musical instruments or writing poetry seems to rely on the capacity to be alone.²⁰

Why is there this powerful association between solitude and creativity? Long and Averill argue that we live in highly structured environments: the places we inhabit and the people we interact with reinforce our identities and narratives. If environmental influences are altered or reduced, or distance is created between the agent and the environment, mental structures are affected as well, and this may allow a different organization of thought. Thus, creativity can be facilitated by stimulating imaginative involvement in alternative realities.²¹ Imaginative involvement in an alternative identity requires de-structuring of particular modes of consciousness that involve the sense of time, experience of self, and form of sociality. Some cognitive characteristics associated with solitude (e.g., limited sociality, limited intersubjectivity, personal time perspective) offer opportunities for making transitions from social worlds to potentially creative worlds of scientific theorizing and fantasy.

Self-reflection and self-attunement can also be facilitated by solitude.²² We gain a new understanding of ourselves and our priorities when we are detached from our usual social and physical environments, or when these environments are altered. This results into a reconceptualization of the self, potentially leading to self-transformation.²³

2.3. Spirituality

Enhanced spirituality is one of the benefits most popularly associated with solitude. Documented cases include those of religious mystics and prophets such as the Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, Moses who have reported divine communion in solitude.²⁴ Solitary meditation has been practiced individually and collectively by nuns, monks, and devotees of numerous religions.²⁵ And tribal cultures include solitary quests for higher levels of consciousness into the rites of passage for their adolescents.

The link between solitude and spirituality has been studied in religious solitaries from distinct cultural perspectives. When experiencing the relative social freedom and lowered inhibitions of solitude, people can focus on spiritual concerns. Solitude enhances their ability to contemplate their place in the universe and their own thoughts and desires. Taoists as well as Christian hermits value solitude because they believe it replaces the distorting pressures of society with the healing power of nature which allows for insight, freedom, and creative self-transformation. In these traditions, the significance of solitude for spiritual development is often made explicit.²⁶

[A monk] poured some water in to a vase and said: ‘Just look at this water.’ They did, and it was murky. A little later he said to them: ‘See now how the water is cleared.’ And they could see their faces in it like a mirror. And he said to them: ‘This is like the man who lives among other men and because of their turbulence cannot see his own sins, yet when he lives alone, especially in the desert, he can see his failings’.²⁷

As the mystical experiences of the solitary voyagers and the tribal solitary rites of passage, the clarification of the water in the monk’s vase depicts the belief that solitude facilitates not only spiritual insight, but also an undisturbed deeper knowledge of the self.

Finally, spirituality can also be about feelings of connectedness. People can experience intimacy in spiritual encounters with themselves, their environments or their gods. This shows that, perhaps counterintuitively and differently from loneliness, solitude has a social nature. Followers of a wide range of spiritual traditions have relied on solitude to gain a better insight into themselves or to seek a connection with another.

3. The person and the environment

What factors determine whether an experience of solitude is positive? The nature of the environment where people experience solitude, or the nature of the people who experience solitude?

3.1. Solitude, choice, and control

Neither solitude nor loneliness requires that the person is objectively alone. People can feel lonely or experience solitude even amongst family or within the mechanisms of modern institutions. However, aloneness is a typical aspect of the experience of solitude. After studying the effects of compulsory or enforced solitude (such as those experienced in solitary confinement), Shaun Gallagher and Bruce Janz ask whether it is the willingness to be alone that distinguishes solitude from loneliness and makes solitude as a positive experience.²⁸ Is solitude good in virtue of being a choice? Does a person exercise autonomy and control in the experience of solitude?

Gallagher and Janz propose that in order to understand the relationship between solitude and agency, we need to think of the self in relation to the environment and focus on the notion of autonomy. In particular, practices that involve aloneness will result in changes in the possibilities for action that agents perceive in a given environment. Such changes may increase or decrease the autonomy of the agents. Loneliness may be seen as an experience of aloneness that is not chosen but is imposed by worldly circumstances and results in an impoverished perception of what possibilities the agent has for action. Solitude may be seen, instead, as an experience of aloneness that is chosen and results into an enriched perception of what possibilities the agent has for action.

Social psychology– and in particular, the literature on positive illusions, self-efficacy, and self-affirmation²⁹ – teaches us that, to face constant challenges effectively, people need to believe that they can change things for the better, and in order to do that they need to have a sense of competence, control, and efficacy that motivates them to act, combined with a sense that their goals are both desirable and attainable.

In some circumstances people’s sense of agency is supported and enhanced, for instance when they reflect on previous successes and acquire beliefs about their capacity to achieve challenging goals or overcome obstacles. Such circumstances have a beneficial effect on the agents’ perseverance in pursuing the goals that they may initially fail to achieve, enhancing their resilience.³⁰ Perhaps surprisingly, solitude seems to have similar effects as optimism in that it fosters productivity, mastery, creativity, and even pro-social behaviour: why?

Recent research from the Solitude Lab provides some initial answers. We know from the optimism literature that for the motivation to pursue their goals to be sustained, agents must deal «with the stressful circumstances of daily life with the resources conferred by a positive sense of self».³¹ Solitude seems to reduce stress, and help people feel calm and relaxed, decreasing high-arousal emotions.³² Solitude has also been linked to wellbeing and other positive outcomes when it is the agent’s choice, both in the sense that it is the agent who decides to be alone, and that it is the agent who decides how to spend the time they have on their own.³³ This form of autonomous solitude is likely to contribute to effective coping at critical times.

3.2. The solitude niche

Given its situational and contextual variables, solitude has been described as an ecological niche offering both opportunities and dangers.³⁴ The characteristics of the creature who aims to thrive in a given environment will be a factor contributing to whether the creature will enjoy opportunities or face dangers. One proposal is that, to make best use of solitude, a person must have achieved certain age-related capabilities.³⁵ The three most important features are: (a) the successful negotiation of attachment processes in infancy; (b) the capacity for advanced reasoning skills; and (c) the development of the propensity for reflexive thought, as influenced by previous social interactions.

On this view, solitude experiences are not solely determined by the developmental and personal characteristics of the agent. Rather, the solitude niche is captured most fully in the interaction of the agent’s characteristics with the attributes of a specific solitary setting. In a situation of reduced social stimulation, the person whose characteristics facilitate feelings of comfort and control over their particular surroundings is more likely to find solitude rewarding than the person prone to feel at the mercy of that specific environment.

Very challenging physical environments have been mastered by famous solitaries, but other experiences of solitude are more mundane. This interplay between personal characteristics and features of the environment also begins to explain the common observation that some people claim to want more solitude and yet often their wellbeing decreases when they are alone; other people fear and avoid solitude but then they thrive in it. People tend to idealize conditions that, if realized, they would find difficult to tolerate; or expect the worse from conditions that are very different from those they currently experience, only to find that they soon ‘settle’ and come to truly appreciate their new condition.

According to Long and Averill, personality characteristics (e.g., openness to novel emotions) and developmental milestones (e.g., attachment capabilities and identity-related achievements) increase the agent’s chances to make good use of time spent alone, but the construal of the solitude experience and the agent’s interpretation of it make a difference as well. In an environment of decreased social input, inner life (e.g., memories, interests, self-related beliefs) will be responsible for the content of the agent’s immediate experience. If solitary people are able to rely upon their beliefs to maintain sufficient feelings of control as well as security in their connection to society, then they can use the freedom afforded by solitude for a range of potentially beneficial purposes. However, if their beliefs result in anxiety, due to lack of volition or social disconnection, then they will likely retreat into loneliness or look for surrogate experiences of sociality – as some of those offered by mass media or communication technology.

4. A phenomenological study of solitude

We discussed some of the benefits of solitude identified in the psychological and philosophical literature and paid special attention to how solitude can impact agency. We now want to make a novel suggestion, that solitude can lead to the presence of a deeper connection with another and to a sense of empowerment, and discuss the findings of an idiographic, in-depth study conducted by Valeria Motta, aimed at describing how loneliness and solitude are experienced in the context of a religious community.

4.1. The method

The study is composed of semi-structured interviews conducted with six participants. The experimental design involved opt-in recruitment to take part in one-to-one, in-depth interviews.³⁶ Participants were from a community of Catholic religious women who describe themselves as having freely chosen to submit to vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience to a life-long service of God and the neighbour. The transcripts of the interviews were subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).

Sitting within both a specific hermeneutic phenomenological and the wider post-discursive qualitative traditions as it does, IPA research foregrounds the role of language, culture and other forms of contextual resources in coming to understand the meaning of respondents’ experiences via their own accounts. The interest is in understanding the relationship between persons and those aspects of their world that are significant to them. ‘In between’ person and world is where meaning arises, and in an IPA qualitative analysis this is often framed explicitly through an examination of language which denotes or connotes valence (e.g. via reference to affect, emotion, feeling, mood, sensation, evaluation and appraisal) or relates it through tone, metaphor and imagery. IPA is a third-person approach to qualitative research, which requires first-person accounts of an experience which is of some significance to the respondent. In some respects, it shares common ground with other qualitative approaches. But in IPA language has a constructive and performative role, rather than a representational one. And that is how the data were approached and analysed in this study.

Sampling in IPA is usually purposive: that is, samples are chosen because they can offer an illuminating insight into the phenomenon under investigation, rather than because they are statistically-representative of a population or norm. IPA usually requires a reasonable degree of homogeneity within a given sample, because its approach is particularly useful for understanding different perspectives in a single context. Motta conducted all of the interviews, which were audio recorded, in a quiet room at the convent. For the analysis, Motta followed the process starting with a detailed reading of each case and exploratory coding.³⁷

Next, Motta conducted more detailed, line-by-line coding, following strategies for identifying and exploring meanings within a text.³⁸ In each transcript, proposals for possible themes were made, first noted in the margin on the transcript, and then mapped over to the case level summary. Themes were identified, where themes should be understood as experiential statements, describing the relationship between the participants and a specfic aspect of a given phenomenon. The identfied themes were further explored and discussed as candidates for thematic categories, to check them for consistency with the evidence, coherence at the case level, and possible connections between them. From this, a table of themes was created which was the starting point for further analysis and reflection.

The analysis points to loneliness as a deeply felt distressing experience of absence that prevents one from fully experiencing oneself³⁹; and to solitude as a pleasant experience of stillness, silence, lightness, power, and energy that leads to openness, freedom, authenticity of self, and feelings of deeper connection. What the study indicates is that there is a distinct phenomenology of solitude. Interestingly, the experiences of solitude recounted in the interviews illustrate and flesh out the benefits mentioned in the previous sections, where the phenomenology of solitude is intertwined with the person’s sense of agency. Gallagher and Janz point out that if we think about solitude «simply in terms of whether someone wills or does not will to be alone, that is, in terms of an individual’s free will or autonomy, it’s not clear how that difference makes such a profound difference to the experience of solitude itself».⁴⁰ But autonomy is more than being willing or unwilling to do something. We suggest that what is positive about solitude is that it supports a person’s sense of agency, allowing for a sense of empowerment.

4.2. The context of solitude

The overarching aim of the study was to understand experiences of loneliness and solitude. This included considering consequences of loneliness and solitude, and the psychosocial processes which allow people to cope with it or thrive in it. This aim was achieved by studying experiences of isolation and connectedness in the context of a religious community.

The experiences of solitude are situated in a specific institutional context. Contexts set implicit (and sometimes explicit) social expectations and rules, but people often make their own choices within those contexts. The choice of joining a religious community could be seen as similar to the choice of withdrawing to a secluded world. However, in the course of the interviews it became clear that for the religious women who participated in the study joining the Catholic church was akin to choosing the type of environment that would allow them to open themselves up to exploring new worlds, realizing their most authentic selves.

The life of the Catholic nun Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz (1651?-1695) offers a historical illustration of such type of choice. Sor Juana is rated among the first five lyric poets in the Spanish language. Her life was driven by the need to follow her inclination toward learning. But the prohibition against women’s learning in Mexico at the time she was growing up meant that she was self-taught from an early age. The breadth of her concerns includes the explicit awareness of limitations imposed on women because of gender, as well as women’s need for education. In 1669 she entered the Convent of Saint Paula of the Order of Jerome. «It was from this convent that Sor Juana won international fame for her literary talents and erudition – and it was indeed a type of safe haven until her difficult last years, when she was caught up in a damaging public battle about her lifelong dedication to letters and learning».⁴¹

The study provided us with the opportunity to reflect on how experiences of withdrawal from some worlds can open gates to different worlds. The main line of enquiry for our study was: How do you experience and understand your experiences of loneliness and solitude in the context of a religious community? In 4.3. and 4.4. we present selected quotes to illustrate the analysis of the themes that emerged from the study on the experience of solitude. In 4.5. we focus on the specific theme of empowerment that is central to our argument here.

4.3. Solitude as a pleasant experience of stillness, silence, lightness, and energy that requires space

4.3.1. Stillness and silence

All the sisters refer to stillness and silence as features of their own experience of solitude. In the following passage, Sister Catherine describes a retreat centre where she worked for several years. She refers to the distinction between loneliness and solitude:

SC: Honestly, I can only say, the truth shows when you “come away with me to a quiet place and rest” you’ve almost got to bring a person. And that’s probably why the retreat was so good because that’s what it was doing. The drive up to the main street was 1 mile long. One mile! To the drive! […]

They came to a quiet place…to rest. And it’s the same thing even here in the middle of …all these people who are working here. And still in the middle of a crowd! You can be so lonely but you can say: “come with me to a quiet place and rest.”

And if that’s God calling you just sense you’re going into the presence, just come with me and rest. And be, just be aware, God took us, he is holding us in existence, isn’t he?

Sister Catherine is rephrasing a quote from the bible, ‘come away with me to a quiet place and rest’. This is a very meaningful phrase as it suggests that even when withdrawing, one is not necessarily alone (feeling lonely). Sister Catherine talks about making a journey and reaching a place which is physical (the retreat after the drive to the mountain), and has a metaphorical sense (a peaceful and quiet state of mind, achieved when one gets away from the demands of a busy life).

Sister Catherine refers to solitude requiring a quiet place. This is an enlightening excerpt from the interview with Sister Augusta where she distinguishes loneliness and solitude:

SA: But solitude…loneliness… I don’t know. Loneliness…Yes.I used to feel lonely but then I realized, as I’ve got older, that I valued the silence. It’s…we are in the silence and there’s more. you can’t be lonely in the silence. And then there’s a silence, you know, a heart silence. Not just around the heart but right inside the heart. And you can’t be lonely when you’re in that silence. You know it’s a deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper kind of silence. […]

VM: I’m very interested in this deeper silence. You place it in the heart.

SA: Yeah. It’s out of the head, you see. It’s with the heart that one sees rightly. What’s significant is invisible to the head or the eye.

As Sister Augusta says, loneliness ended when she started valuing the silence. The sisters associate silence with stillness, in contrast with the restlessness that they associate with the experience of loneliness. Sister Augusta refers to things that we do not immediately perceive with our senses and that are still of value and part of our experiences. When Sister Augusta says silence is something ‘we are in’, this suggests belongingness rather than detachment.

Sister Augusta tells us how her experience on a silent retreat where she was sharing silence with others made her experience a different kind of connection.

SA: Well, the silence is all around us. If we sat here for an hour… We would be fine. And we would be richer at the end.We wouldn’t have to talk… There’s a lot…If you go on a silent retreat.and I’ve been on a 30 day retreat. You go on a silent retreat and you are not speaking to anybody. You see people walk around and you’re doing communal things, you’re eating in the dining room and you’re praying in a praying room or you find a quiet space away from everybody…you go out to be outside to be alone. And then you’re…somehow you know that all these people are doing the same kind of thing and you feel connected to them in a deeper way and we haven’t said one word, we don’t even know each other. You know, there’s that deeper connection.

One can enjoy solitude in the company of others. This experience is echoed by all the sisters. Experiences of solitude are characterised by silence and stillness, and they lead to a different sense of connection. Stillness and silence in this context are more than the absence of movement or sounds, they are something to be valued, states people are in, suggesting a sense of belongingness associated with the experience of presence.

4.3.2. Lightness, power, and energy

Our analysis above reveals a connection between solitude and the experience of presence. This presence is described by the sisters as a sense of physical energy, lightness, and ‘life force’. The experience is also described with visual characteristics such as brightness; and with emotion words such as joy and happiness.

The following passage offers an illustrative quote where Sister Bernice expresses the feeling of lightness:

SB: If you go to the mountains…and even sit. Sometimes if you just sit just in the garden. All alone. And you just kind of, you just think…just you wait, the trees and you look at, kind of, you can see you’re in a different level… you raise up above. […] We don’t give ourselves time. Sometimes, it’s that thing. You’re alone with God. Alone with this creation that we call it. You’re alone with this creation. And you are on a different level.

There is a variation as to what the source of this energy is across the interviews. At times, it is described as something from the inside that pulls them towards God. At other times, it is described as an external force coming from God, the holy spirit, nature, or other people. We shall return to this theme when we discuss agency and empowerment.

4.3.3. Space

As we saw in the first excerpt and as is reflected in all the descriptions of solitude, there is an element of spaciousness involved. It does not have to involve physical distance – as we saw space can be created by silence – but it often does. Another type of connection that emerged in the analysis is with nature. This is evident in how the qualities of trees and flowers are described, in terms of richness, energy, and solidness. Being outdoors is associated with feeling of having enough space to breathe, and breathing is identfied as a fundamental aspect of the experience of solitude. The feeling of having ‘enough space to breathe’ can be experienced outdoors (the mountains, the woods, other places in nature) and it can also be experienced indoors (It can also be one’s own home or the convent). This suggests that there are different places where solitude can be experienced but the analysis also suggested that spaciousness can be experienced in different ways and that solitude can include an experience of ‘inner space’. In the interviews, stillness, silence, lightness, power, and energy are all described as experiences of presence and are all connected to God. Sister Augusta illustrates how she experiences solitude in relation to the woods and the trees:

SA: But the solitude is finding…like I can go to the woods, I find woods very… a place where there’s a richness, there’s an energy there’s uhm…the trees, I think… their solidness. There’s something about… they kind of speak to you.

The passage is a perfect example of how being in solitude is intertwined with experiencing nature and experiencing God. This experience is also related to reaching a new level of connectedness. In the course of the interviews, experiences of solitude are characterised by presence, not absence. This was a common thread in all the interviews.

4.4. Solitude as leading to openness, freedom, authenticity of self and a feeling of a deeper connection

4.4.1. Authenticity and freedom

The experience of space has been connected to freedom in an interesting way. In this quote Sister Augusta describes solitude in an enclosed space, at home. Here she talks about the time when she had to share a house with another sister.

SA: We got on. [And then occasionally] I’d have the house to myself (sight of relief). Oh, space! Space! Great! Oh, I was just breathing…the space. I’d walk around and say: “Bliss! This is lovely. I love the space. I love shutting the door. Shutting the world out. Just leave me here and let me just be and think and pray and read and…not bother. It was wonderful.

The feeling of having ‘enough space to breathe’ can be experienced outdoors and indoors. That is because both being immersed in nature and being indoors can offer the possibility for ‘shutting the world out’as Sister Augusta says. The world referred to here is the social world. But ‘shutting the world out’ is not painful as in social isolation, it is ‘blissful’ because it is seen as an opening of multiple possibilities for action that are not determined by preconceived social roles. Shutting the world out is a choice and what agents look for by doing so is a temporal experience that enables them to have contact with themselves in order to achieve a state where they are at their best. This is exemplified by this excerpt from Sister Augusta.

SA: I meet people…I’m not looking for anything from people in that sense because I’m satisfied on, on my own. I’m not searching out there will you be my friend? If I have friends, it’s great. But I’m not going around looking…Can I get everything from you? No. I’m offering myself out there with other people and, and that kind…dynamic can be harmonious and…be there and make the world a better place… in some way.

Freedom here is the freedom to explore multiple possibilities outside preconceived social roles in order to optimize the experience of self. The way in which Sister Catherine expresses her solitude as a choice makes the relation to the self even clearer.

SC: So I would take myself to…other people would go to the garden. No, I just like the church. So sometimes I would go where the choir at the top…and I find myself. But I regularly do that. And especially if there is something…maybe…I just want to be able to be open, to be free, to be the person that God has made me.

Sister Catherine chooses the church. But the most interesting part about this excerpt is that it reveals something more about what people seeking solitude are ultimately looking for. Journeys in solitude are journeys where one takes someone on a quest. That someone is usually oneself. We may wonder what this quest is about: «[…] and I find myself». In this particular excerpt, Catherine talks about being open, being free, being the person she is meant to be. This suggests a search for authenticity but also for a fullness of experience.

4.4.2. Deeper connections

The analysis shows varying levels of intimacy in the connections with the social world, nature, and God. In the experience of solitude, connections with the social world are determined by roles from which it is possible to withdraw in different ways. Unlike in the experience of loneliness, there is no perception of absence in this withdrawal. This can be understood as an experience of freedom from the restraints of the social world. Answering the call is a choice: «Some women choose to be single. It is called single vocation». This choice is a choice to be in the service of others, to be the most authentic for others. Being there for others is embedded in this very choice to be oneself. Relinquishing this ‘call’ is interpreted as not allowing the possibilities that can be open to someone who is not constrained by preconceived social roles and denying the possibility to fully experience themselves.

The sense of deeper connection is felt with both with oneself and with God as we see in the following passage from Sister Catherine:

SC: Now, you know just to be as real as I can possibly be here and now. And that’s what I… that’s how I find…that’s very much my kind of spirituality. And that’s how my that’s where I find my strength is in prayer. But the prayer…and it’s not going to say a big prayer, not at all. I just sit there, be still and know. Always hear: “just be still”…and know that I am God. Because it just comes from him. So that’s the spiritual, spiritual side of it. And the, uhm…the closeness and the power. You know the holy spirit is this kind of…it’s very much… he’s guiding everything. And…so that’s been it throughout my life.

The connection with God provides the most intimate level of connection as it is the basis for any other experience or connection and that possibility for making sense of any experience. It provides a ‘thread for experience’ as it is related to the possibility to integrate, to understand, to find meaning, and to be with other people as oneself. Answering ‘the call’ to the sisters is a reciprocal movement because it opens up multiple possibilities for the self.

4.5. Solitude as empowerment

A theme that we found in the interviews concerns a kind of power that the sisters feel in themselves and that reflects their own personal skills and qualities whose successful deployment they largely attribute to God. This is described as a capacity to enable others, to be empowered in one’s mission, to see what other people cannot see and achieve what other people find difficult or impossible. This power is enhanced by solitude and for the sisters finally realising that they have that power is the end result of a long process in which self-reflection plays an important part. Solitude enables them to discover and exercise that power.

The following passage by Sister Augusta illustrates these points:

SA: I’m here in the here and nowl have opportunities to make… integrate as much as possible and to understand and find meaning in my life so that I can then be…uhm, somebody who is… I can be there with other people as me. It could be as an enabler but I offer that kind of…

I’m not looking. when I meet people. I’m not looking for anything from people in that sense because I’m satisfied on, on my own. I’m not searching out there will you be my friend? If I have friends, it’s great. But I’m not going around looking… Can I get everything from you? No. I’m offering myself out there with other people and, and that kind… dynamic can be harmonious and… be there andmake the world a better place… in some way.

These extracts show the power of agency that the sisters felt at different times in their lives when they achieved something that was appreciated by others or just really difficult to achieve. They talk of having ‘opportunities’, ‘making the world a better place’, ‘being able to do anything’, being an ‘enabler’, finding ‘strength’, which are suggestive of the altruism, mastery, and productivity usually associated with people developing a strong sense of themselves as competent agents. The sisters often attribute this to a higher force, God, or the holy spirit, but it is significant that they are the means by which valuable goals are accomplished.

The following excerpt from Sister Catherine is one of the many that illustrates these aspects:

SC: And all the time I just felt… an empowerment. You know, there was a strength or a power that was way beyond me. But there was a power within me…

When I say I was empowered off the power of the holy spirit working within me. Because, how can I just say it…uhm… with God I can do anything. You know, I can do what he’s asking me to do. But I’m just aware that… his spirit. He’s not going to just ask me to do anything I’m not capable of doing. And that… I’ve always had. there was always a kind of confirmation when I was going to… the retreat centre when Sister A. said: “Catherine., you will be very good with people. Don’t worry about what you’re going to be asked to do. You’re good with people and whatever you’ll be asked to do you’re going to do it because you won’t be asked to do anything you’re not capable of doing so just have that confidence. just have confidence in yourself that whatever you’ll be asked to do, you’re going to be able to do it because you have got this…”

We see in this passage by Sister Margaretta an illustration of altruism. She expresses feeling honoured to see an accomplishment that she enabled with great efort:

SM: I had a class of 51. There were 12 of them, very clever, then there was average and then there were 2 who couldn’t manage. And eventually my good headmistress, she got somebody in to take away the 12. There was this lad, poor fellow, he couldn’t read, and I taught him to read, and I could see, he came up to the desk and he read, and I said: ‘Oh, John, that is great.’ And there was all this smile in his face. I can still see the smile. What a great honour.

The ability to perceive other people’s positive experiences (a smile or a look in another person’s eye) and experience awe is echoed by all the sisters.

An excerpt from Sister Berenice shows how salient and significant these perceptions can be:

SB: We were going over a bridge and there was this young girl sitting in the bridge begging. And I had a coin or something in my pocket, and I gave it to her. And she looked up at me. Now, my brother was with me, he just passed on, that was fine, I wouldn’t say anything. It’s fine. That was it. We possibly passed them many times more. But it was just that smile. Was enough. It was God. I can still see her. You know that kind of feeling? When you just say thank you, God is… help you to do it. It’s not myself it’s not me, I don’t get proud because I did it, I just get [opens her eyes and mouth expressing awe] I was used to do it.

This passage also illustrates how her altruism does not prevent her from being unique. She distinguishes herself from her brother in that she is able to see and experience something he is not. She recognises her uniqueness in acknowledging something as sublime. This self-recognition is the result of a long process of self-reflection which solitude allowed for.

The sisters often remark how they discovered themselves when they experienced solitude, how they reflected on themselves, and felt connected at those times. There are several ways in which the circumstances of this discovery were expressed: “I love shutting the door. Shutting the world out. Just leave me here and let me just be and think and pray and read. It was wonderful.”; “I just want to be able to be open, to be free, to be the person that God has made me. Now, you know just to be as real as I can possibly be here and now.”; “Because silence helps you to look at what’s going on [and that] makes us understand what we are about, really.”

5. Conclusion

There is some literature on the benefits of solitude which we briefly reviewed here, but no systematic attempt has been made to explain why solitude (differently from loneliness) is perceived and conceptualised as a positive experience. In this paper we made a novel suggestion, based on (a) previous work pointing at autonomy, freedom, and connectedness as key features of solitude; and on (b) the phenomenology of solitude experiences investigated as part of an empirical study of loneliness and solitude in a religious community. Our suggestion is that solitude is a positive experience because (diferently from loneliness) it is an experience of presence and it supports a person’s sense of agency, leading to the person feeling empowered.