Reflections 2024-08-03
I’m now here at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. I have been staring into space like this dog surprisingly more times than I expected. Does this mean I have slacked off spending time with myself in solitude and now just catching up?
For life to exist there has to be balance. Too little water? Dead. Too much water? Dead. Answer – Just enough water. Too little sleep? Dead. Too much sleep? Dead. Answer – Just enough sleep. Too little solitude? Confusion. Too much solitude? Depression. Answer – Just enough solitude.
The just-enough-amount is something humans had to discover over the course of history. But before the advent of science, humans lived and thrived. So even though it helps to know through science that 8 glasses of water and 7-9 hours of sleep is ideal everyday, humans would still survive if they listen to their bodies.
However, there is a difference between those needs so fulfilling them might work differently. Water and sleep are physical needs. On the other hand, solitude is a mental need because solitude is where one pays one’s mental debts and emotionally process events to realize what they mean.
Social needs plus spiritual needs = one?
Now off to a tangent. Is it worthwhile to consider that social need and spiritual need belongs together? Spiritual need is connection with God. Social need is connection with people. They’re both connections to entities beyond ourselves. There are several socio-spiritual activities and these might prompt one to think that probably these two needs belong to the same class. These activities include church activities, spiritual retreats like PYC, and outreach activities like medical missions.
So going further, this means humans have 3 fundamental needs: physical, mental, and socio-spiritual. PMS. Just like premenstrual syndrome.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs lists physical, safety and security, love and belongingness, self-esteem, and self-actualization. All these five can fit in the 3 fundamental needs classified. Safety and security can belong to physical or mental needs. Safety – physical. Security – mental. Self-esteem can belong to mental needs. Self-actualization can be mental as well as socio-spiritual because it involves going beyond the self.
Please tell me if there are flaws to this categorization. Comment them down below and let’s discuss. It could be fun.
Back to the main question
How much solitude do humans actually need? How many hours per day? Is hours even the right way to measure? Wouldn’t it be an inappropriate measurement just like measuring the number of hours you need to drink water instead of the number of liters? Extrapolating from physical needs, it probably depends on the attributes of the person. The amount of water, food, and sleep depends on a person’s weight/mass, height, age, and genetics. There are variables to determining how much is required to fulfill a physical need. That might be true to fulfilling mental needs like solitude.
Before proceeding further, it might help to list down other mental needs so they can be considered for generally determining the amount of solitude one needs. Other mental needs include: stimulation/novelty needs, security needs, autonomy and competence, self-esteem needs.
And then we need to determine when a need is fulfilled. Intuitively, it’s when we feel Satisfaction. When we drink water, and we’re healthy, we stop when we feel satisfied. When we eat, we stop when we’re full. When we sleep, and we’re healthy, we wake up naturally and feel satisfied. For solitude, which can include writing a brain dump like this, or prayer (just like Jesus waking up early in the morning to go to the mountains and pray) it can be catharsis. Tension gone. Until we reach that point, the need is left unfulfilled.
Conclusion
Now we have some practical answer we can use everyday to determine if we had our share of solitude. The answer to how much solitude one needs intuitively is satisfaction, peace, and catharsis. Fulfillment happens when we are able to think through and find a solution to our personal problems. Peace happens when we figure out what to do on Monday at work. Catharsis happens when we express our feelings and process troubling events in our life. Until then, we are left stressed and confused which then leads to running away from pain through all kinds of vices.
Related:
- Ang Picture ang Tumatanda, Hindi Ang Tao! | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Book recommendation
- Zone out on purpose | Book Notes