I am exceptionally good at being alone.
For a long time, I assumed this meant I was also good at solitude.
Then I read Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart, and he created a problem.
The solitude of the desert fathers and mothers was not simply privacy. They weren’t trying to get away from people so they could hear themselves think. They withdrew from distraction to become available to God.
That distinction landed hard.
It is entirely possible to be alone and remain completely occupied with oneself.
Thoughts. Feelings. Ruminations. Sensations. Plans. Questions. Self-examination. The endless internal assessment of how everything is going.
No one is interrupting.
But neither are we necessarily listening.
We can become the loudest person in our own solitude.
The Desert Is Not a Private Room
Modern solitude is often understood as time and space for ourselves.
Privacy. Restoration. Thinking. Processing. Making things. Getting away from demands. Being left alone long enough to hear ourselves again.
There is real value in all of this.
But Nouwen’s desert tradition asks something different of solitude.
The desert is a place of conversion.
The distractions are removed, but attention does not simply turn inward. It remains aimed toward God.
Stay put.
Refuse distraction.
Let God address you.
That is considerably less productive than much of what passes for solitude now.
There may be nothing to solve. Nothing to produce. Nothing to understand about ourselves before the hour is over.
We remain available.
And that means solitude can become uncomfortable precisely when it begins doing its work.
When Solitude Becomes Self-Sufficiency
There is another difficulty here.
The practices that appear most spiritual can become remarkably good hiding places.
Privacy can become withdrawal.
Discipline can become control.
Silence can become insulation.
Solitude can become a beautifully furnished bunker.
None of these things necessarily look unhealthy from the outside. They may look peaceful, disciplined, contemplative, even wise.
That is what makes the distinction difficult.
Self-sufficiency can dress itself up as spirituality.
A person can become extremely skilled at creating the conditions of peace while becoming less willing to be disturbed, less willing to need anyone, less available to the demands of love, and increasingly convinced that the absence of friction is evidence of formation.
The desert fathers and mothers seem to have expected almost the opposite.
Solitude was not where the self became more protected.
It was where the self became available for conversion.
What Comes Back From the Desert?
This gives solitude a surprisingly practical test.
If solitude is formative, eventually there should be evidence somewhere other than solitude.
Not merely an insight.
Not another page of writing.
Not a profound realization.
Something should become different in ordinary life.
Are we more free?
More loving?
More capable of choosing rather than reacting?
More able to remain present when another person is inconvenient?
More willing to tell the truth?
Less governed by the need to control what happens next?
The test of solitude may not be how peaceful we become while nobody is bothering us.
The test may be what happens when somebody does.
A Different Measure
I have started using one question:
Did my solitude make me more free, more loving, more able to choose, or did it make me smaller and avoidant?
It is an uncomfortable measure because it does not automatically reward silence.
A peaceful afternoon can fail it.
An uncomfortable period of prayer can pass it.
Privacy can restore us or conceal us.
Silence can make us available to God or leave us alone with an increasingly sophisticated version of ourselves.
Perhaps this is why the desert tradition understood solitude as a place of conversion rather than escape.
The point was never simply to become good at being alone.
The question is what kind of person comes back.
How would you know that your solitude was a place of conversion? What changed? What came back from the desert?
