Importance Of Spending Time Alone Essay

Why Spending Time Alone Matters
“The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space free from outside pressure which is the incubator of the spirit,” said Marya Mannes, an author and critic. We live in a world of constant contact—a place that’s losing sight of the art of solitude. Offices are abandoning cubicles in favor of shared desks and open common spaces. And rather than sitting at their desks working independently, school children are grouped. It seems that a never-ending “ping” has become our culture’s ubiquitous background noise, instantly informing us of every tweet, every tweet, and every notification. Even something as mundane as eating food has become over documented on Instagram. In fact, people have come to equate a desire for solitude with people who are lonely, sad, or have antisocial tendencies. One result of all this social connection is that many of us rarely spend time alone. However, solitude is not only good

Our perceptions are flexible; they change as we both accumulate new experiences and listen to others talk about theirs. But when we are in a constant state of interaction, we’re also in a constant state of processing new information. This makes getting a grasp on reality rather complex. It's not so much that we don't have a clear perception of our reality; it's that we don't take enough time to explore the reality that we have created. Taking the extra time to disconnect ourselves from the world for periods of times allows us to reacquaint ourselves with the way we see the world. We will have more time to consciously roam around in our own minds to notice the way we think, notice the way our thoughts interact with the physical world, and notice how we judge both the outside world and