This morning, gentle readers, I bring to you, without my usual caterwaul-y commentary, a recent essay by a woman named Rachel Denton entitled “I am a hermit.” Not in the colloquial “I stay in every night and knit” way, but an official Catholic religious woman who lives a life of contemplation and solitude, not unlike Harpy Hall of Famer Julian of Norwich.
You should read the whole piece; it’s short and affecting in its honesty and simplicity. Denton describes her life thus:
On a typical day, I pray between 6am and 8am. After breakfast, I work on my calligraphy business, perhaps on card designs or wedding invitations, until midday. I eat, nap and read until two, then work in the house or garden until five. Over supper, I listen to the radio for an hour, followed by more prayer. In the evenings I may sit and watch the fire, sew and wander around the garden.
I try to live a simple life. I grow my own fruit and vegetables and, on an income of around £8,000, I have to be careful what I spend. I don’t have a television and I allow myself only an hour of radio each day.
I made an official commitment to be a hermit in November 2006, at a special mass. Before you can take your vows in the Catholic church, you have to put together a “rule of life” agreed by the bishop. My vows were poverty, chastity and obedience, which I have interpreted as simplicity, solitude and silence.
On one hand, this life would drive me crazy. I love my television, my internet, my books, my friends, the constant stream of interaction I get from my colleagues, my neighbors, my IMs, my on-line commenting, this blog, and text messages. I love living in the city, with its endless array of people and restaurants and street life.
On the other hand, I’m noticing, to my dismay, that my talent for multi-tasking is starting to resemble ADD. I don’t focus well. I jump from one task to another on my computer desktop, leaving the previous task half-finished, the e-mail half-written, the web page half-browsed, so I can dip into the next one. I find it hard to sit and concentrate on one thing and one thing only. At home I watch TV as I browse on my laptop and answer e-mail and scribble things to share with you on this blog. I’ve started neglecting my needlework and I cook things that require minimal prep time. Often, I put a pot on the stove and then run to check my e-mail, then run back to check the pot, then sort through my snail mail, etc…
I didn’t use to be this way. As a kid, I was perfectly happy to sit for long periods of time in solitude with the printed word. I majored in English and Spanish literature in college, which required hour upon hour of reading and writing. (NB: when I was in college, dorms were not wired, and relatively few people used the ‘net with the frantic regularity we do today). No problem–I was well-conditioned to the insular life of a reader. Then the internet and e-mail happened BAM! Communication galore! Then we all got wireless access. Then I got cable (after holding out until this past year). Now I have an iPhone, so I can twiddle away on the internet at line in the grocery store.
Could I read all of Bleak House or One Hundred Years of Solitude straight through today? Maybe, either through great force of will or if I was locked in a room and deprived of internet and television. I’m starting to think I need to establish some rules for myself, the same as when I was in grade school and my mom decreed that my sister and I could watch no more than one and a half hours of TV a day. When I do manage to unplug myself, I’m always grateful for it. Long runs in the park–no iPod for me–clear my head. Ignoring the DVR in favor of the Sunday New York Times is a much more rewarding way to spend my weekend mornings.
I couldn’t cut myself off from having boyfriends or significant personal relationships, as Rachel Denton has (she discusses it in her essay). Her life of complete solitude would make me lonely; I like my downtime but I value companionship very highly. But I’m envious of the calm, orderly nature of her life–the way she has time for each and every thing in its rotation. I might not want to be a full-on hermit, but I could stand to cut myself off for a while from the constant buzzing of the outside world, the white noise of endless communication and information whizzing by on the information superhighway and spinning out of the 24-hour news cycle.
Does anyone else think a Harpy Hermitage sounds like a good idea? Even just as a weekend retreat? Am I the only one who’s starting to get fatigued by the push-pull of our excessively plugged-in world?
I can always tell when I’ve taken on too much in my life, because I begin to fantasize about being a hermit. I could totally do it, too, since I have some pretty strong loner tendencies just below the surface. But I couldn’t handle all the religious stuff. Just give me really good coffee, really good books, and an organic garden, and I could last for months. Although I suppose if you’re only planning on lasting “for months” that doesn’t really count as being a hermit.
Oh, totally. I’m already something of a hermit but as you know, I’d really love to have a farmhouse somwhere to share with the boyf and a pack of dogs.
I am sick to death of hearing about Twitter at this point.
I would love a Harpy Hermitage, even if it was only a weekend or a long week. To get away from the constant demand to be CONNECTED and up to the minute with everything would be wonderful, and since I already do cut myself off to a large extent–I am an inveterate reader: bookstores and libraries are my happy places–but to not have the demand to answer that text immediately, or reply to that e-mail promptly would be amazing.
Wonderful post. I am also an incorrageable multi-tasker. Unfortunately, it is by necessity right now because I am working 2 full time jobs, and if I am ever to watch TV or listen to the radio, I must also be preparing for one job or another. I find this routine to be mentally draining and exhausting. I am definitely the type of person who enjoys silence and solitude. I am always amazed at how much more productive I am when my cable TV is on the fritz, and it makes me feel terrible that I can’t just turn it off myself.
This phenomenon is a society-wide trend too, I have heard that TV writers are having to “dumb-down” their episodes (I know, as if that was possible) because so few people actually sit and watch TV without having their attention diverted by a computer or phone at the same time. I am completely guilty of this and sometimes I’ll get 45 minutes into an episode and not even know what’s going on.
Maybe we should aim to start small instead of going cold-turkey. One day a week with no electronic multi-tasking, or no electronics at all. Maybe we can get back to the real and not virtual things we like – gardening, cooking, reading, knitting… – and appreciate the sense of accomplishment that those activities can bring.
What a great essay by Denton. I’m currently being a depressed hermit and isolating myself (check email once a day, ignore Facebook, and, unfortunately, unable to write much of anything), but not for any greater purpose. I admit I sometimes had flights of fancy about becoming a nun when I was a kid because then I could live a solitary life. But that whole atheism thing always was a stumbling block.
@Becky: I really like your “one day a week” idea. Which is exactly what’s intended by the Judeo-Christian idea of having a Sabbath day once a week. I might observe it more closely as part of my “start small” unplugging.
@s.o.l.a.g: ((((()))) I would just note for the record that sometimes greater purposes are present, but not immediately apparent.
That list of tasks started and half-finished, juxtaposed with twitter and browsers and cell phones and what not, and then the ADD comment struck a chord.
Focus is something to cultivate, like physical strength or balance. Strong focusing abilities means better problem solving for really difficult questions.
I could totally be a hermit. I regularly fantasize about saving enough money to buy a private island and sustain myself there in perpetuity. I discovered this place called Ile Jacobin off the Normandy coast of France, and that’s my ultimate fantasy. Google it and click on the first result — doesn’t it sound heavenly?
*sorry, not the Normandy coast, Brittany coast. Still, France + private island + tiny castle = heaven.
I took a great class in college about European culture surrounding the turn of the century (1899-1900, that is). One of the things that stuck with me was how people were convinced that the surge of information suddenly available – multiple newspapers! mail twice a day! periodicals! – was responsible for mental exhaustion. I believe the condition was called neurasthenia. People couldn’t cope with all of this information they were obligated to consume. It was somehow tied in with feelings of anxiety about the dawning of a new century.
One the one hand, my thought was, typical Victorian-era mental-health bunk. On the other hand, exactly! We could spend every minute of every day keeping up with information, and only scratch the surface. The pressure to be “in the loop” has grown exponentially in these last few years. Chucking it all is so tempting. I’m lucky to have an internet-, tv- and radio signal-free retreat in the mountains that is great for weekend escapes. Trouble is, going back to civilization on Sunday night gets tough!
This is why I don’t Tweet or Tumble, have cable or a cell that I use more than 5 minutes a week. The internet is already more than enough “contact.”
And I could always read Bleak House. My favorite Dickens.
neurasthenia. thank god there is a name for what i have.
PhDork, Bleak House is totally my favorite Dickens too! Or at least, I always say it is, having not re read it since high school.
@JDRegent: “I am not a villain, sir! I am a member of the legal profession!”
@PhDork: If I were going to retreat to the Harpy Hermitage, I would take a stack of Dickens with me. I need time and quiet to read him. It’s so obvious that he was writing back in the days when the written word was people’s primary form of entertainment, b/c he was never a “less is more” kind of guy (also, he was paid by the word, so no reason to be!). I miss my big thick Victorian novels.
I’m so glad to see all the Bleak House love around these parts. I read that last year, and everyone I met IRL looked at the book in horror whenever I carried it with me. I love Dickens.
PHDork – it’s my second favourite Dickens (although i’m oddly reading it at the moment), my favourite is Our Mutual Friend, which i would be reading but i’ve lost my copy (read lent it to an ungrateful person who has not given it back).
I’ve just had a great week in a cottage in montauk being a hermit (sort of). I didn’t take my cell phone, there was no computer and between us my husband and I found we had 75 bucks to last the week we were there. We had a fantastic time reading, looking after small daughter on beach, walking everywhere (we can’t drive) and making proper meals which lasted. And then I realised that I hate modern life large amounts of the time.
although Bleak House does have my favourite ever Dickens line:
‘For Mr Voles is an honourable man and he is make hay of the grass which is flesh to feed his three daughters in Taunton’ – I love that line more than any other I think.
I’m having the same problem as everybody else. I’m unemployed and have SO much time on my hands and I’m trying to do productive things with that time but then I look up at the clock and realize I’ve been on the internet for 6 hours and forgot to eat. I have 12 tabs open of things that struck me as “interesting” as I’m reading other interesting things. I’m beginning to feel dumbed-down. I’m getting so much “information” but I’m not getting any knowledge. I look forward to coming to Harpyness because it makes me engage and think. That said, I’m hearing the rain start to pitter-pat on my roof and am thinking this would be a nice time to sit on the porch with a cup of tea and read.
HAH, my life in rural Missouri is sort of like that…except w/o the prayer….
Yay! A forum in which to reference one of my favorite articles ever! http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google
Also, I second (third? +1?) the hermitage idea, it would be lovely to have a retreat for retiring feminists. Retiring in the napping sense, of course.
[...] But for the first seven years I lived in New York, I lived in a building where I didn’t really know my neighbors beyond an occasional “hi there.” My friends were scattered around the five boroughs, and they reported feeling similarly estranged from their immediate neighbors. Urban life is often alienating, leaving people socially disconnected in spite of close physical proximity. We’ve come a long way from the days when people tended to stay within a few miles of where they were born. That eminent observer of human interactions, Jane Austen, wrote: “three or four families in a country village is just the thing to work on.” That’s easy for her to say; there are two bustling country villages just in my building alone. And while I like having my own space, and consider it a hallmark of my independence, I don’t want to be a hermit (at least, not all the time). [...]
Hello Folks!
My appologies first, didn’t know this was a strictly female web-site, so please accept my applogies. Have to empapathise with all the above. I’ve lived happily most of my life as a hermit of one sort or another, I even lived in small monestaries as a Pujari/sadhu for four years in Uttar Prasdesh in Northan India, I did so from 18 years of age to 22 years of age and loved every minute of it! But alas! Life is not that simple here in the UK, but it is not impossible to live as a hermit, I still am one at 33 years of age. Currently I’m studying Diagnostic Radiography, I wear a shirt and tie to Uni and everyone thinks I’m a ponce! And I don’t care! Imagine what they would think if I wore something I would consider more appropriate as a hermit. In my case, old military gear or good work wear to keep out the cold, I often carry a sheath knife and an axe, sometimes I even wonder around with a horse on loan planning my escape. In all honesty, living the way I do isn’t that bad, I’ve worked for many years in the NHS and I’m seeing a sharp rise in alcholism and abuse of every kind! Especially amongst the females, I’ve seen it all in A&E at a restless and busy city hospital and nothing surprises me! So the call you feel in your hearts to get away is the herd like responce to fight or flight!
I prefer flight, I generally dislike people because I’m a self confessed snob, I think most people are rude and brash so I prefer what God made for us all.
‘Thy Lord is Thy Shepard, I shall not want but to lie in pastures green.’