I like time to myself, but I’ve never thought of it as a soul-enriching practice. The word “retreat” applies to my Irish goodbyes, but in the sense of surrendering to my introversion, a scurrying away, not toward solitude as nourishment. Nothing more meaningful than a need to recharge like a phone.
Michael McGregor has given me reason to rethink this. His cover story explores the power of leaving the world behind from time to time. McGregor has written a book based on his experience of solitude on the Greek island of Patmos. By coincidence, fellow writer Pico Iyer recently published his own book about delving solo into the depths of his soul on frequent visits to the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery on the California coast. Guiding us through Iyer’s experiences and his own, McGregor’s essay illuminates differences in their respective pursuits, but also their common purpose.
Theirs are active, exploratory quests, not the skulking withdrawals I’m prone to, but McGregor also offers a new way to think about my “I think I’m going to take off” instincts. The monks Iyer visits offer simple rooms to pilgrims like him who “desire relief from the outside world.” For decades he has routinely stepped away from the venturesome activity of his global life to seek that relief there. McGregor’s most acute experience with solitude came decades ago, though he has cultivated it in everyday situations ever since. By extension, I have come to understand that my own mundane leave-taking — even though I’m only going home — might be more than a disappearing act.
What began as an escape for Iyer, McGregor writes, “flowered into a celebration of the more outward-looking qualities of perspective, humility and service.” On Patmos, McGregor experienced something similar: “Away from the voices at home, even my voice at home, my awareness of myself and the world around me deepened in a way I knew would emanate from my words and actions wherever I went.”
I haven’t done the harder introspective work they have, but even without my conscious effort, I think my impulse for choosing seclusion has had a comparable, if more modest, effect. In that sense, I find at least a little something in common with these two resolute seekers.
“The relationship between solitude and the outside world — the world of suffering, loneliness and oppression; the world in which most of us live — is one of the least understood and least talked-about aspects of taking time for oneself,” McGregor writes, distilling the understanding he came to on Patmos: “Solitude is never for yourself only.”
In McGregor’s persuasive telling, solitude strengthens our bonds with all things, even to the point of the self’s dissolution into a larger whole. I’m far from that level of enlightenment, but my introvert’s search for shelter from life’s relentless inputs nurtures that feeling. The more deliberate kind of retreat that McGregor and Iyer have sought offers the promise of still-deeper connections.
So, with that in mind, I should probably get going.
Jason Kelly is editor of this magazine.