Michael Harris touts value of alone time in new book 'Solitude'

Lauren La Rose, The Canadian Press</span>
Published Thursday, May 11, 2017 7:00AM EDT

TORONTO -- While tech gadgets and social media offer individuals instant access to the outside world, Michael Harris says living in a time of constant connection also comes with consequences.

"We evolved in an environment where social connections were deeply important to our survival," said Harris, author of the Governor General's Award-winning book "The End of Absence."

"Social grooming was deeply important to our survival, and now we have technologies that are able to hijack those instincts that we have for social grooming. Because they're hijacking those instincts, the responsibility now falls on us to curate healthy media diets in the same way we curate healthy food diets."

In his new book, "Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World" (Doubleday Canada), Harris delves deeper into the desire for digital disconnect in an effort to achieve what is proving to be increasingly difficult: the ability to get lost and be truly alone in a hyperconnected society.

"Solitude" opens with the Vancouver-based author recounting the remarkable story of Dr. Edith Bone, a Hungarian doctor with Communist sympathies who was detained upon suspicions she was a spy.

Bone spent seven years and 59 days in solitary confinement living in squalid, frigid conditions, yet managed to maintain her sanity. Harris writes of how Bone would pass the time reciting poetry, translating the verses into each of the six languages she spoke. She would take herself on imaginary walks through cities she had visited, and even fashioned breadcrumbs into a makeshift printing press.

"I was beginning to look at this idea of how to be alone, and when I discovered her story and how dramatically different her faculties were to my own, I started to think of it really in terms of this lost art: there was a skill here to be learned and that I didn't need to be passive about it," recalled Harris.

Harris said he saw the mission of "Solitude" to explore what it means for individuals to be "happy and productively alone."

The book concludes with Harris documenting his week alone at a family cabin in the woods on an island two hours off the B.C. coast. He acknowledged the idea of an urban connected person tying to carve out solitude in an "obsessively connected world" was likely more in line with reality for readers, rather than extreme examples such as Bone.

"For most of us, the same way cutting sugar out of your life is not a rational way to fix your diet, we need to have moderation," said Harris. "The long-term goals should be: 'When I wake up in the morning, is the cellphone on my bedside table? Or is it in my living room and I'm not going to look at it for the next two hours?

"'Am I having dinner with my children? Or am I staring at my phone when I'm trying to tell them a story about my day?' It's smaller daily decisions that are more likely to make a difference over the long run."

Harris also laments the loss of true discovery when travelling as a result of tech tools. He explains how a surprising sojourn in Italy by his partner, Kenny Park, forever shaped his view of the travel experience.

"He was travelling through Europe and he was just on a fairly ordinary street drinking a coffee walking around just basically lost -- and this was just before smartphones. And he turned around a corner -- and there was the Trevi Fountain," Harris recounted.

"He had never seen a photo, nothing had alerted him to it, and it burned on his corneas. It has become a touchstone for his understanding for what it is to travel now: to be blown away by an accidental discovery like coming around the corner and discovering the Trevi Fountain.

"That's the kind of romantic epiphany I worry people aren't going to experience in travel in a constantly connected world."

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