Learning Solitude

I looked out from the upstairs window
down into the small garden below
late autumn sunshine and my grandson
aged seven, sitting on a wooden hammock
swinging alone. His mother asleep

his grandmother attending to laundry
his grandfather, me, upstairs, working.
And he seemed content.
And I thought how good it was
that he should learn to be alone, not lonely
but alone.

There’s a difference. Though perhaps
it takes a lifetime to understand.
There will be times in his life
when he will be alone.
When the people he loves
won’t be there.

When decisions must be made
without reassurance, when disappointment
or grief
must simply be endured.
When there is no one at hand
to distract him from himself.

It may also occur to him
that solitude can be treasured.
Perhaps learning to be alone begins
in such an unremarkable way:
a seven-year-old boy on an old hammock
moving gently backwards and forwards
in the autumn sun

with no one entertaining him
no screen demanding his attention
no need for anything to happen
simply discovering that his own company
is sufficient.

It seemed to me, watching him
that this was preparation for life.
We spend so much effort
teaching children how to live with others.
How to make friends, how to belong
how to love and be loved.

All of which matters.
But perhaps we should also show them
how to inhabit their own lives
when nobody else is there.

Sooner or later solitude comes to us
and if we didn’t receive it
we knew only absence.

But solitude can also be a place
where thought settles
where we hear ourselves more clearly
where memory and imagination
have room to move.

Looking down at him contentedly swinging
I wondered whether he was beginning to learn this
without knowing it.
And perhaps that is how such things are best learned.

And that thought got me thinking.


John H Davies

3rd X 2026