A Poem for Solitude: “Today” by Mary Oliver
On a recent morning, my husband left to take our son to school, but instead of coming home right away, he drove to the office where he stayed until after lunch. I could not remember the last time I was alone in the house for such a significant stretch of time. Slow and languid, I relished moving from one room to the next. I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling, then read a book for an hour. I did not speak.
In THE CALL OF SOLITUDE, psychologist Ester Schaler Buchholz suggests that time alone is a deep human need that originated before our birth. The womb was calm and contained, and this safety is something we naturally crave, fulfilling “our wishes to explore, our curiosity about the unknown, our desires to escape from another’s control, our will to be an individual…”
Solitude, she argues, is the very “fuel for life.”
Another take on solitude is the poem “Today” by Mary Oliver, from her collection A THOUSAND MORNINGS. I’ve taped it to the wall in my office, and especially love to read it in the first few days of my cycle, when ideally, I’m slowing my pace even more.
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
“I hardly move though really I’m traveling / a terrific distance.” How perfectly this speaks to what’s changing within us. We can’t always see the changes with our eyes. We can’t notice what’s beneath the soil in the dead of winter, yet something still stirs.
On a day when we’re doing our best to relish in this kind of stillness, we might look put together from the outside. We’re going about our tasks, but inside we’re trying to be as quiet as possible. Trying to listen. The founders of Red School call this “the 1%,” where you move the needle a little bit at a time, not all at once. Taking the whole day off is lovely, but what about taking five minutes to close your eyes? The secret is the intention behind it, communicating to your inner world that you matter. You’re worth the time. You deserve rest.
One of the biggest benefits solitude affords is the ability to hear ourselves think more clearly. To do what we please and not worry about anyone who might need something from us. To complete a thought, a paragraph, an entire chapter without interruption.
But how does one access this necessary solitude on a regular basis? Anne Morrow Lindbergh spent two weeks on the Florida coast away from her family. Last year I went away for a couple of nights as well, and it felt deeply restorative (podcast episode below). But escaping, as needed as it is, isn’t always an accessible option.
Another way to put it: If we’re storing up our solitude for the uninterrupted stretches of time when we can leave our home and our families behind, we’ll miss out on a lot, I think.
The way I’m negotiating solitude in this season of life is not utter isolation, which is rare in my week. I’m considering solitude as a spectrum. There can be solitude from the virtual world. From newsletters and social media and online-ness. If we remove these inputs, even if we are not physically alone, it can tap us more quickly into ourselves, like a direct line that’s a bit harder to hear in the course of a normal day.
This week or this month, try taking a walk without listening to music or a podcast. No headphones. Just notice the morning, the birds, the cars. Use your senses. Same goes for those in-between moments when you’re waiting in the pick-up line or for practice to finish, or anytime you might instinctively reach for your phone.
Try going to a comfortable chair in your home and closing your eyes. Count your breaths for a minute.
Make a cup of tea and sip it in silence, maybe on the porch.
Don’t use social media apps for the day.
Let’s see what opens up.
