Is it difficult for you to be in solitude in the world today?

We can turn off our computers, TVs, cell phones etc, and lock ourselves in our rooms, and that would be solitude. It’s all a choice isn’t it?

“we are constantly connected to the web”
That still being a choice.

So yes. It is possible.

I had the same initial reaction as @Aesthetic_Mess and @ChazMaz but then I remembered a recent vacation in which I pointedly and repeatedly told coworkers that, while I’d be doing a few work tasks, I would not be able to get online often or maybe even at all. I swear to GOD, the first day I was off, someone e-mailed me to ask a question that she wanted answered right away. And e-mailed me again when I didn’t respond. (She never picked up the #%^$*! telephone, or asked someone else who WAS in the office to help. /rant)

So yeah, you can be alone but sometimes it takes more effort than you’d expect.

Not at all. As much as I love interacting on the Web, I treasure the opportunity to be alone with my thoughts so I’ll find those moments when I can. It’s not always easy, but opportunities do present themselves. Yesterday during my lunch hour I shut my office door, turned out the lights, except for my electric Jack ‘O Lantern and a candle I had burning, flopped down on the rug with a pillow and just relaxed and let my mind wander. Moments like that are terrific and I grab them when I can. The chance presented itself yesterday and I jumped.

Because I am “connected” much of the time—both professionally and as a recreation—I seek solitude. And it’s not hard for me to find. I can create quiet times in my home; I can go for a drive; I can take a walk; I can even let my mind wander a bit to find a peaceful spot.

As others point out, it really is a choice with very little effort required.

No.

I live in the mountains and have spent the last few years embracing my solitude.

I love my aloneness and keeping company with myself.

While extroverted by nature my ‘balance’ is good and I love that I live in a serene environment that lends itself to quiet, nature and spaciousness.

It is a choice but for me it is getting harder to resist checking my email, the replies on fluther etc… I live in NYC, so there is distraction everywhere.

I hate being alone, but I would far rather turn off the computer and go out in the real world with my friends. For me, the internet substitutes for times when going out isn’t possible or convenient. It’s just an alternative place to meet people.

It’s easy. Walk in the park.

Yes I find solitude very relaxing and I find it in a couple of places. One is in a cabin up in the tops of the Rocky Mountains where I go especially in winter time where you can hear the snow fall it is so quite. I also have a meditation room that I designed to be noise free with the walls having the proper sound dampening so that it seems dead still in there.

No, if you can’t find the time, you aren’t making the time. At one point I had a television, PS2, and laoptop in my room and none of them were on. I would come home and read.

I’m kind of curious here about what solitude means. To me, the internet is a lot of reading. I’m not actually with anyone. I’m really on my own, in solitude (usually), just exercising my mind.

Let’s say we’re off in a mountain redoubt somewhere, like @Coloma, and we don’t have the internet, but we do have books! The books are only different in one way from the material on the internet: they have a longer period of time between interactions.

In prior times, people wrote a lot of letters. Phones were expensive, and travel was even more expensive. So letters were the big thing used to communicate over long distances.

Is a letter writer from a mountain redoubt, where a person lives without seeing another live human for months at a time, living in solitude? What if he gets ten letters a day? What if there is a courier service made up of owls like in Harry Potter’s world, and they whisk handwritten letters around the world in minutes. Are you in solitude then?

For me, the answer is that the internet does not take me out of solitude. It just quickens the speed of what is still asynchronous communication. Even if I use messaging, I’m still in solitude. The only time I might consider that I am breaking out of it is with voice or video interactions. I mean, I would definitely consider those to not be solitude.

But do you see what I mean? I’m just not sure what concept the OP is using, nor why that particular concept of solitude has been chosen.

And then there is another assumption that I read into the question and that is the assumption that solitude is a good thing, but a rare thing, and difficult to find. I question all those notions, but that’s beyond the scope of this particular question.

I don’t think it is hard at all to understand what Solitude is and maybe it could be slightly different for others but when all is said and done solitude is what we make it. So as most have said it is a choice and one that for me is a great thing and where I can untangle each day and make sense of life and the answers I seek.

What I meant when posting about solitude. Is similar to a writer’s solitude, where all you have is a pen and paper and your own thoughts.

@kdrive I can achieve what you have described substituting my laptop for a pen and paper, and sitting out by my pool.

No problem where I live. Just walk or bike into the woods a mile or two. There is no one around unless you count the deer and bears.

Nope. “Off” button for the computer is near my right big toe.