On being alone

If you’d rather listen, the thinking behind this piece is also part of my podcast, Where We Place Ourselves. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/where-we-place-ourselves/id1878422335?i=1000763577512

She spent last summer in Exeter. Eight weeks, mostly on her own. Long for us but for her (and in her words) it was FIRE.

Two things happened. She made friendships that were real and she learned to spend time with herself.

Her friends had 8am classes. She didn’t. She’s not a morning person. So there she was, with time. Not the kind you steal between things. The kind that stretches out in front of you. And instead of filling it, she found her way into it.

We’re not very good at that. We fill space quickly with noise, plans, movement. Because being alone, properly alone, can feel like something to solve. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s something to enter. There’s something about that kind of time. It doesn’t make you more productive.It makes you more… visible to yourself.

I’ve been thinking about this alongside something I read this week. In Taoist philosophy, there’s a concept called pu. The uncarved block. The self before it was shaped. Before you learned which reactions earned approval and which didn’t. Before you adjusted, adapted, performed.

Most of what we carry now doesn’t start with us. The need to be seen as competent. The fear of getting it wrong. The instinct to respond in a certain way, because we’ve learned it’s safer. It feels like who we are. But much of it is something we were taught. Something that stayed. And maybe that’s why being alone can feel unfamiliar. Because without the noise, without the feedback, without the constant mirroring, you come a little closer to what was there before all of that.

Not a better version of yourself or a more polished one. Just… a quieter one.

There’s something about thresholds that feels relevant here. Growing up in an Indian home, there was often a rangoli at the entrance. Not permanent, just something you stepped over without noticing. You paused, even if only for a moment. You became aware that you were entering something. Leaving one space and arriving in another.

We don’t mark those thresholds in the same way anymore. We move quickly between roles, expectations, conversations. From meeting to meeting, from one version of ourselves to another. And often without really noticing the crossing.

Maybe that’s what time alone gives us. A threshold. A small pause between what the world has shaped and what is actually ours.

I wonder if that’s what she found in those quiet mornings. Not independence, not even confidence. Just a little distance. Enough to recognise something that had always been there.

I’m still learning that. From her.