Solitude

October 17, 2025

I am on the island now, in the northern reaches of the Huron Lake, where the grey waters of autumn stretch out from the rocky shore to touch grey clouds. This is my time of solitude, October. I write here in my cabin, and the boreal forest is all around, and it is good.

Even here, on the island, I hear the chatter about the importance of relationships for “healthy aging.” The winner in the healthy aging contest according to the experts, is the one with the most relationships, whether they be with large dogs, homeless people in the nearby park, the woman in the subway who talks with herself, whatever.

Balderdash.

What counts in the third stage of life (more of these stages later) is the cultivation and maintenance of a small number of time-tested relationships, wisdom laced on either side, mutually respectful, ingenuous, and authentic. But the groundwork of these relationships — the one without which the others are not possible — is the relationship one has with oneself. Solitude is what makes the self-relationship live.

You see, we have two selves; the self we are, or try to be; and the self of the marketplace —the agora self.

In my days as a psychiatrist, now long ago, I had the privilege of seeing in secrecy a number of distinguished and highly accomplished persons, some of whose names to this day remain unmentioned to family or friend. These people had fame; they had wealth; they had success in the eyes of the tabloids; but inside they felt empty, and alone.

Let me change tack a little here, and ask the reader … why do such people do drugs, and kill themselves, or both (since drug abuse is but a longer-term version of suicide)?

Have any of you stood in front of an audience of thousands and felt the excitement the applause the exhilaration of it all … only to return after midnight to an empty and silent hotel room and meet the one who awaits you there? That’s what these people have to face, and for some of them, it is just too much.

So that’s why I spend October with myself each year; to get to know the One that I have been; the One that I may be; and the One who shall be needed for what lies ahead.