What a Time to Be Alone

01Why Are We So Afraid of Solitude?

We spend so much of our fleeting lives running desperately from silence, filling every empty space with background noise, endless scrolling, or the company of people who barely even know us. But what if the profound quiet you are so desperately avoiding is exactly where you will find your greatest inner strength? Society has conditioned us from a very young age to view solitude as a punishment. Think about the school cafeteria when you were a child; sitting alone at a table was universally understood as the ultimate symbol of social failure. We carry that childhood trauma into adulthood, terrified that if we are seen alone, the world will assume we are unwanted, unloved, or fundamentally flawed. This fear dictates so many of our choices, pushing us into crowded rooms where we feel entirely unseen, simply to avoid the stigma of being physically by ourselves. Let us look at a very common, everyday scenario. You walk into a bustling coffee shop or a busy restaurant, and the host asks, "Just one?" Automatically, a subtle wave of embarrassment washes over you. You sit down at your table, and what is the very first thing you do? You pull out your smartphone. You scroll through applications you have already checked ten times, or you pretend to text someone, desperately trying to look busy and preoccupied. You do this because you want the strangers in the room—people you will never see again—to know that you have a life, that people care about you, and that your current state of solitude is merely a temporary scheduling conflict. We exhaust so much precious energy performing for an audience of strangers, all to mask our deep-seated discomfort with our own uninterrupted presence. Chidera Eggerue challenges this exhausting performance by asking us to fundamentally redefine the difference between being lonely and being alone. Loneliness is a profound state of lack; it is a gnawing feeling of disconnection that can happen even when you are surrounded by a hundred people. Aloneness, on the other hand, is a state of wholeness and intentional presence. When you are alone, you are entirely complete. You are not waiting for a "better half" to arrive because you are not a half; you are a whole, complex, breathing universe. The fear of solitude is often just the fear of having to finally listen to our own internal monologue. When the external noise is stripped away, the thoughts, anxieties, and desires we have been suppressing rise to the surface. Facing those thoughts takes immense courage, which is why so many people prefer the distraction of bad company over the clarity of solitude. To break free from this cycle, we must start treating our solitude as a sacred destination rather than a waiting room. You are not waiting for your life to begin when a romantic partner or a new friend group arrives; your life is happening right now, in this very second. Eggerue encourages us to start claiming our physical and emotional space unapologetically. If you want to go to an art gallery, an independent cinema, or a fancy dinner, you must grant yourself the permission to go completely solo. The first time you do this, it will likely feel incredibly awkward. Your heart might race, and you might feel the imaginary eyes of judgment searing into your back. But as you sit through that initial discomfort, a miraculous shift occurs. You suddenly realize that nobody is actually watching you. The world is too consumed with its own insecurities to obsess over yours. Once you conquer the fear of being seen alone, you unlock a superpower that makes you virtually invincible. You realize that you do not need to tolerate mediocre conversations, one-sided friendships, or disrespectful romantic partners simply because you are afraid of the alternative. When solitude becomes a place of comfort, joy, and deep rest, your standards for who you allow into your life naturally skyrocket. You begin to understand that your time is a highly valuable currency, and you stop handing it out to people who do not appreciate its worth. Embracing your own company is the first, most crucial step in taking back the pen and writing the narrative of your own life, unbothered by the noise of an insecure world. Once you stop fearing the quiet, you must conquer the next hurdle: the opinions of others.