"I should be able to live exactly as I chose, obedient to no necessities but those imposed by wind and night and cold, and to no man's laws but my own."
-- Richard Byrd
Maybe it is selfish to desire solitude.
Afterall a retreat into oneself necessarily means cutting off friends and family regardless of length of time.
And it is hard to justify at times, for it's not like all solitary beings are retreating to compose the next Walden.
But silence, especially in this increasingly interconnected world, is luxury.
"What is clear is that most of us persist in equating aloneness with loneliness, and company with companionship, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary. "We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers," is how Henry David Thoreau put it after two years as the sole inhabitant of a house he had built in the Massachusetts woods. You're never more alone than when you're in a crowd. A cliche, perhaps, but most of us recognise the truth in it."
- Read rest of article here.
(Picture from here. What a great view!)
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