Learning to Be (more than okay) Alone
As you may have noticed these past months, I’ve been exploring how it is to do various things alone—drinking champagne, eating dessert—and those explorations were, of course, really about doing other things alone—hiking, biking around a new city, lazing in a city park and so on. I’ve been thinking a lot about all the qualities and sensations of being alone. All the different things I do alone. How each thing feels different when I do it alone, from when I do it with another person. How some things, which I never thought could be good alone, are.
In fact, it is this discovery, that more things than I expected are actually quite good when done alone, that has provoked this current deep dive into the varieties of aloneness. It took me some time to get here. My marriage definitively ended about two and a half years ago, so I’ve had some practice at this alone business. And I resisted the potential for good in the experiences until quite recently.
Sports were where I really learned how to do things alone. Specifically, training for ultra marathons was the first time I started clocking serious time alone. Now I do almost every sport, almost all the time, alone, except my occasional Saturday morning runs with friends. Before the ultras, I had multiple running partners. We kept each other company on long training runs preparing for marathons. When I got into the ultras, I didn’t have much company and began to figure out this alone-ness. Until I surprised myself by enjoying the liberated feeling of heading out for hours alone in the mountains or threading through different parks in the city.
In these last few years, I’ve gone through this same process with quite a lot of other activities.
An Incomplete List of Things I Do Alone (which I used to do mostly with another person)
All the sports, most of the time, including …
Run—on roads and trails
Cycle—on roads and trails
Cross country ski
Snowshoe.
Hike
Yoga
Cross-Fit
Also …
Binge Netflix
Go to the movies
Fix magnetic kitchen cupboard door clasps
Rehang the tricky, heavy mirror over the fuse panel
Grocery shop
Go to the farmer’s market
Cook meals
Eat meals
Go to a coffee shop for the occasional breakfast or afternoon macchiato
Go home after dinner with friends (including my own birthday dinner)
Take the subway home late at night
Plan trips
Fly on planes
Wake up on weekend mornings (well really all mornings)
Dance
Go for walks
Take naps
Sleep
An Incomplete List of Things I Haven’t Quite Figured Out How to Be More Than Okay About Doing Alone:
- Go to the theatre, live dance performance or the movies. It turns out that what I love about live performance or seeing a movie in the theatre is diving into conversation afterward with my companion, to prolong the delight or bemoan the time we can’t get back.
- Swim in a pond or lake. Partly because of water safety drilled into me at long ago summer camp. And I know that’s not the whole reason.
- Cook an elaborate meal.
With each experience (on these lists and so many others) there is a process of acclimatization to aloneness, like what I went through in sports. A process of familiarization. Of figuring out how it (whatever it is) works alone. What works alone. How the experience is different. What are the pleasures. And the disappointments. Because to be sure, there are those too. Which is why the title of this piece includes the phrase, more than okay, and not some version of the word, joy. Most certainly, some alone-ness is joyful. And I’m not fully emancipated from my deep-seated desire to be in connection with another human being while experiencing life. Chocolate cake is delicious, and it tastes better with someone I love (friend, family or intimate partner).
And then there’s last night, when I finally closed my computer after a disheartening study session for an exam I’m taking in a couple of weeks and, sitting on a chair to take a breath, I had a vivid and visceral desire for a light hand on my shoulder. A gentle kiss on the top of my head.
The past couple of weeks my Saturday runs have been alone. I’ve gone up to the Cloisters Museum, a run I’ve been doing for more than 30 years. Every person who has ever been beside me on that run comes with me in my heart. And I’m there, at every age I’ve ever been on that stretch of road. Still here. In the company of spirits who lighten my step.
