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The Secret Life of You

How a bit of alone time can change your life, relationships, and maybe the world
Pantera Presserschienen am01.07.2023
'In this powerful meditation on aloneness - as opposed to loneliness - Kerri blends incisive journalism with critical thinking, research, wit and heartfelt storytelling ... For those burned out by busyness and connectedness, this book is life-changing' Ginger Gorman Why is it so scary to be alone with your own thoughts? When columnist and commentator Kerri Sackville decided to stop filling every idle moment with distraction and learn to be comfortable alone, her quality of life soared. From boosting creativity and productivity, improving self-awareness, building resilience and moral courage, to improving relationships and connection with others, a bit of alone time is vital to wellbeing. But with smart phones, social media, endless streaming and podcast options, as well as the demands of work, family and friends, spending meaningful time on your own can feel impossible, unnecessary, or even indulgent. In The Secret Life of You Kerri Sackville analyses society's attitude towards solitude - why is it okay to eat breakfast at a café on your own but faintly tragic to dine alone? She identifies the roadblocks in the way to unplugging, contemplates aloneness vs loneliness, and looks at the difference between true connection and mere connectivity. Finally, she provides practical advice on how to become comfortable in your own company, in order to enjoy - and even cherish - time alone.

Kerri Sackville is an Australian author and columnist. She has written extensively for online and print publications including Sunday Life magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and news.com.au, and has appeared frequently on TV and radio. Kerri is the author of several works of non-fiction and has contributed essays to three anthologies The Secret Life of You is her fifth book. Kerri has three kids and a recalcitrant cat and lives in Sydney.mehr

Produkt

Klappentext'In this powerful meditation on aloneness - as opposed to loneliness - Kerri blends incisive journalism with critical thinking, research, wit and heartfelt storytelling ... For those burned out by busyness and connectedness, this book is life-changing' Ginger Gorman Why is it so scary to be alone with your own thoughts? When columnist and commentator Kerri Sackville decided to stop filling every idle moment with distraction and learn to be comfortable alone, her quality of life soared. From boosting creativity and productivity, improving self-awareness, building resilience and moral courage, to improving relationships and connection with others, a bit of alone time is vital to wellbeing. But with smart phones, social media, endless streaming and podcast options, as well as the demands of work, family and friends, spending meaningful time on your own can feel impossible, unnecessary, or even indulgent. In The Secret Life of You Kerri Sackville analyses society's attitude towards solitude - why is it okay to eat breakfast at a café on your own but faintly tragic to dine alone? She identifies the roadblocks in the way to unplugging, contemplates aloneness vs loneliness, and looks at the difference between true connection and mere connectivity. Finally, she provides practical advice on how to become comfortable in your own company, in order to enjoy - and even cherish - time alone.

Kerri Sackville is an Australian author and columnist. She has written extensively for online and print publications including Sunday Life magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and news.com.au, and has appeared frequently on TV and radio. Kerri is the author of several works of non-fiction and has contributed essays to three anthologies The Secret Life of You is her fifth book. Kerri has three kids and a recalcitrant cat and lives in Sydney.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9780645412932
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Erscheinungsjahr2023
Erscheinungsdatum01.07.2023
Seiten320 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1343
Artikel-Nr.11934199
Rubriken
Genre9200

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



 
The rules of solitude

I dislike the word journey . If it s not a trip that takes you from one physical location to another then I d rather not call it a journey. So let me just say this: during my process of learning to feel comfortable in myself, I wanted to figure out why being alone was so challenging in the first place. As a starting point, I needed to look at our culture. We are all the product of our personalities and our upbringings, but we are also the product of our social environment. And our society has extremely specific norms around how we should spend time on our own.

Even as children we learn that solitude is acceptable only in clearly defined circumstances. We internalise the rules of solitude as we internalise other cultural norms: we are never explicitly told what they are, but we know exactly what is acceptable and what is not.

For example, we know that it is fine to be alone at the end of a long, exhausting day spent dealing with people, but it is not fine to spend a Saturday night on your own when most people are out on the town.

We know that it is very pleasant to eat breakfast alone at a café while we read the news, but to eat dinner by yourself at a restaurant is embarrassing and sad.

We know that it is sensible to be single for a while after the break-up of a long relationship, but it is unfortunate - and even a little tragic - to remain single for several years.

We know that backpacking solo through Europe is adventurous and exciting, but spending a month in a cabin on your own in the woods is odd and borderline alarming.

We know that we should be delighted if our child entertains herself for half an hour while we re busy in the kitchen, but if our child consistently chooses to play by herself instead of playing with other kids, we should be gravely concerned about her social development.

To summarise: alone time is acceptable in small doses, but being in company is normal, the default, and the ideal.
The extrovert ideal

One of the reasons our society devalues alone time is that we are strongly biased towards extroversion. Author Susan Cain dubbed this the extrovert ideal in her book about introversion, Quiet.1 Our culture, she argues, values assertiveness over thoughtfulness, socialising over introspection, and collaboration over individual work. People with big personalities get far more attention and have greater social currency than those who are more understated. If you re an extrovert, you probably don t notice the extrovert bias as we are raised to see extroversion as natural and normal. The bias is, however, extremely obvious to introverts, who are constantly being schooled on how to be more social and outgoing. Try searching how to be outgoing and you ll get about 250 million hits, with articles like Four ways to be more outgoing , How to be more social as an introvert and Seven tips to trick yourself into being more outgoing . Try searching how to be more introverted and you still get the articles on how to be outgoing.

In our extroverted society, we are trained to focus our attention and energy outward towards other people instead of inwards towards ourselves; our culture is intensely preoccupied with social interactions and the relationships between people. We are taught from childhood that love makes the world go round, that family and friendship are paramount, and that the most important thing you can achieve in life is to love and be loved in return. And when we judge people s characters, we focus primarily on how deeply they are loved by others.

Sure, there are indicators of status in our culture that we take very seriously. We are impressed by intelligence, high achievement, power, beauty, fame and, of course, wealth. But when we place a moral value on another human being - when we decide whether they are a good and decent person - we focus almost entirely on their relationships. We consider how many friends they have, whether they are close with their family, and what they have done for other people. In my own Jewish community, a good person is a mensch , someone who is compassionate and generous and kind. In the wider community, a good person is a family man , or devoted to her community , or selfless or popular .

Love is the greatest currency we have. Being loved by another person proves our worth to the world, which is why I always asked potential romantic partners to tell me about their friends, and why politicians parade their devoted families before the media. And this makes sense. We live in a communal society. We are all co-dependent. We need to get along! Of course we should value people who are loving and loved, and who keep the wheels of society nicely greased.

But the flip side of this intense focus on relationships is a distrust of people who like spending time alone. A person who keeps to himself or doesn t have a social network is considered strange, or a bit sad, or genuinely scary. What is wrong with him? we wonder. Why doesn t he have any friends? It doesn t occur to us that he might be comfortable in his own company. It doesn t occur to us that his solitude may be freely chosen.

In our modern world, we are deeply suspicious of people who spend lots of time by themselves. We simply don t believe that they can genuinely be happy. We consider relationships to be the main source of pleasure, joy and fulfilment, above work, above hobbies, above passions, above ourselves. This wasn t always the case. Back in the nineteenth century, poets, writers and artists would retreat into solitude to focus on their craft for months, even years, and they would be respected for their choice and admired for their sacrifice. (The celebrated poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, for example, famously lived alone in a cabin in the woods in Massachusetts for over two years.) These days, however, we d regard the same people with mistrust and pity. You want to be all by yourself? we ask with incredulity. For six months? Are you okay?

Matthew H. Bowker, a political theorist who has studied solitude, believes that we are threatened by people who enjoy solitude because we perceive their aloneness as a rejection of our company.2 If a person can reject us then they mustn t care about us, and if they don t care about us then they might be prepared to harm us. We don t think of a loner as a person with a rich inner life; we think of them as a terrorist, or a serial killer, or a potential school shooter. We don t see their solitariness as a positive choice; we see it only as a withdrawal from society. We move straight from spends a lot of time alone to definitely abnormal , probably a deviant and possibly a murderer .

Our suspicion of loners arises in part from the way we categorise others and ourselves. We like to believe that we are individuals, but we align ourselves with subgroups of society. We classify ourselves and other people according to ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, country and town of origin, religion, socioeconomic group, political beliefs, alma mater, profession, even generation.

We re drawn to identity-markers and to groups that help define us or fill us up , if you will, says Bowker. In the simplest terms, this means using others to fill out our identities, rather than relying on something internal, something that comes from within. 3

Without those identity-markers to ground us and help us to understand who we are, we can feel lost and frightened and unmoored. If I am not thinking of myself as a parent, or a writer, or a daughter, or a friend, or a gen Xer, or an Australian, who even am I? If I am alone and I cannot see myself in counterpoint to other people, do I even exist?
All you need is love

One of our most pervasive cultural rules is that it is not okay to be single for very long. We consider friends and family to be intensely important, but the most significant connection we can have in life is a romantic relationship. Being coupled up is the norm in our society, and to be single is to be an outlier. I know this because in my post-divorce life I was constantly asked why I was single, and in my seventeen years of married life I was never once asked why I was partnered.

Our culture equates living happily ever after with finding somebody to love. All you need is love, we are told, but not just any old love: we need a soulmate, our other half, that special person who will complete us. There is a romantic subplot in pretty much every movie we watch, every novel we read, and every fairytale we were told as kids. Popular culture is obsessed with the romantic lives of celebrities, and every new relationship, wedding, break-up and pregnancy is scrutinised and documented in exhaustive detail.

With such a focus on romantic love, there is pervasive social pressure on all of us to couple up and a serious bias against being single. When being half of a couple is the norm,...

mehr

Autor

Kerri Sackville is an Australian author and columnist. She has written extensively for online and print publications including Sunday Life magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and news.com.au, and has appeared frequently on TV and radio.

Kerri is the author of several works of non-fiction and has contributed essays to three anthologies The Secret Life of You is her fifth book.

Kerri has three kids and a recalcitrant cat and lives in Sydney.