Solitude does not necessarily entail feelings of loneliness, and in fact may, for those who choose it with deliberate intent, be one’s sole source of genuine pleasure. For example, in religious contexts, some saints preferred silence and found immense pleasure in their perceived uniformity with God. Solitude is a state that can be positively modified utilizing it for prayer allowing to be alone with ourselves and with God, to put ourselves in listening to his will, but also of what moves in our hearts, let purify our relationships; solitude and silence thus become spaces inhabited by God, and ability to recover ourselves and grow in humanity.
The Catholic devotion of the Holy Rosary includes the most beautiful prayers to meditate in solitude the mysteries of Jesus and Virgin Mary’s life, feeling in Their company; it’s a devotion to which is associated the divine grace and that causes an effective change of the emotional and spiritual state.
We don’t know much about solitude these days, nor do we want to. A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always loneliness, and that to seek it is perversion. Maybe so. Man is a colonial creature and owes most of his good fortune to his ability to stand his fellows’ feet on his corns and the musk of their armpits in his nostrils. Company comforts him; those around him share his dreams and bear the slings and arrows with him….
John Graves
The Buddha attained enlightenment through uses of meditation, deprived of sensory input, bodily necessities, and external desires, including social interaction. The context of solitude is attainment of pleasure from within, but this does not necessitate complete detachment from the external world.
This is well demonstrated in the writings of Edward Abbey with particular regard to Desert Solitaire where solitude focused only on isolation from other people allows for a more complete connection to the external world, as in the absence of human interaction the natural world itself takes on the role of the companion. In this context, the individual seeking solitude does so not strictly for personal gain or introspection, though this is often an unavoidable outcome, but instead in an attempt to gain an understanding of the natural world as entirely removed from the human perspective as possible, a state of mind much more readily attained in the complete absence of outside human presence.
In psychology, introverted individuals may require spending time away from people to recharge. Those who are simply socially apathetic might find it a pleasurable environment in which to occupy oneself with solitary tasks.
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