In Praise of Solitude

I’ve always loved solitary pursuits.

When I was younger, and basketball was my obsession, there were few greater feelings than shooting hoops in my driveway until my fingers cracked. When golf took its turn as the apple of my competitive eye, in eighth grade, I became addicted to my progressions on the driving range and putting green: wedges, short irons, mid-irons, long-irons, woods, wedges, two-foot putts, five-foot putts, 12-foot putts, 20-foot putts, 40-50-foot lag putts. Later it would be swimming and running. Basketball and golf both cycled in and out depending on the season.

No matter the sport, I cherished those hour-long sessions – sometimes longer – where it was just me, a ball (or many of them), and nothing else. They were meditative to me, a place for my mind to at once be quieted yet intensely, singularly focused at the same time. Arnold Schwarzenegger said something similar on the Tim Ferriss Show: “I also figured out that I could use my workouts as a form of meditation because I concentrate so much on the muscle, I have my mind inside the bicep when I do my curls. I have my mind inside the pectoral muscles when I do my bench press. I’m really inside, and it’s like I gain a form of meditation, because you have no chance of thinking or concentrating on anything else at that time.”

I’d credit a significant portion of whatever level of success I’ve enjoyed in each of those endeavors to these solo practices. The first golf lesson I took was the summer heading into my ninth grade year. Long a soccer player, I was well past the early stages of burnout, despite being good enough to train with the high school varsity team in pre-season workouts. I was ready for a switch. The moment I picked up a golf club – golf and soccer were in the same season in Maryland, so I had to pick – I knew I’d found my better alternative. Soon I was spending enormous chunks of the day, by myself, at the golf course, hitting balls, putting, playing nine holes, grabbing a sloppy burger and a soda at the clubhouse and doing it again. That fall, I made the varsity golf team. Over the next four years, my obsessive nature landed me at the golf course from sunup to sundown on many summer days (I worked at Hayfields Country Club, so when I wasn’t working at the golf course, I was practicing or playing at the golf course). By the time I graduated high school, I left as a two-time captain and MVP while our team hadn’t lost a match in three years and collected four straight county, conference, and district titles.

But again: There was a meditative element to this. It was more than the physical rewards of pursuing something difficult. A mental benefit was invariably coupled with these regular solo practices. I don’t totally understand the mechanics behind it, but my creativity would become unlocked and put on hyperdrive. I’d return home and have entire stories written in my head. When the noise of the world was blocked out, and it was just me and a single pursuit – it helps, I think, that golf, beach volleyball, running, and swimming are largely outdoor activities, as was shooting hoops in my driveway – my brain went to work, subconsciously, on whatever puzzle I had fed it. Sometimes this was homework. Sometimes a feature story. Sometimes it was a relational issue in my life, or a difficult conversation that needed to be had.

Regardless of what it was, these practices, where my body was moving, my mind was still, and the outside noise of the world was nowhere near my obsessive little meditative bubble, were my equivalent of legal performance enhancing drugs. I’d become exponentially better at my craft while also becoming, temporarily anyway, an exponentially better human being. I’m sure endorphins are much to credit here. Same for the breathwork that is involved. But there is something to be said about the mental clarity and focus of it all. For when I’m going through these practices, I’m not just going through the motions; there is a focus as sharp as a tack.

Today, as an example, I hit 300 standing shots on a beach volleyball court: 150 from the right side, 150 from the left side, switching between high lines and cuts. When I’m hitting these shots, I’m not just hitting them to hit them. I’m focusing on my arm swing, my hand contact. I’m conscious of the wind, and what the defense would most likely be doing given that context. With that information, I hit a different style of shot, one a higher and loopier cut to get over the blocker, the other a sharper, faster cut to beat the defender. Same goes for the high line. Of those 300 shots I hit, I re-do all of the ones that weren’t good enough, which means that I probably hit closer to 400.

Evidently, throughout those 400 shots, in which I mixed in 12 sets of interval sprints, my mind chose to write this in my head. I wasn’t consciously thinking of it, but when I walked back to my apartment and showered, the previous 800 words you’ve just read came into my head. I’m far from the first, or only, writer to credit long, solitary pursuits as the source of their creativity, their “muse” as Steven Pressfield calls it. Ryan Holiday has written a number of excellent books and articles on it, his most recent, Stillness is the Key, being my current morning read.

In a world that is becoming more and more hyperconnected, I’ve found, and continue to find, that the healthiest thing I can do is to disconnect, grab a bag of balls, allow my mind to both empty and intensify, and pursue something I deem worthy of pursuit.

Alone.