Solitude

Anne Lindbergh, wife of the famous aviator, worked out her own solution to the problem of finding “quiet time.” Noticing that she tended to feel pulled apart by her duties as wife and mother of five, she began spending some time alone in a cottage at the shore. In the quiet of the cottage and the beauty of the sea, she found the wholeness she needed upon her return to the family she loved. Mrs. Lindbergh wrote that the world doesn’t understand the need to be alone. If you set aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the beauty shop, a social occasion, or some shopping, that is understood. But if you say, “I can’t come because that is my time to be alone,” you are considered rude or self-centered or even strange.