it doesn't seem that long ago that I was
an undergraduate here at the University
of Michigan I was not a particularly
good student my first term freshman year
I got a two point one zero zero grade
point average my second term I got a two
point one zero three which thank you for
me that was progress my sophomore year I
took history 160 which was intro to
American history and I vividly remember
one lecture from that class it was an
angel hall in a big auditorium
the professor was Shaw Livermore he was
a brilliant deeply learned man in his
60s then he was reading from Alexis de
Tocqueville democracy in America about
the cultural differences between
aristocratic societies and Democratic
ones he concluded with precisely this
passage aristocracy had made a chain of
all the members of the community from
the peasant to the king democracy breaks
that chain and severs every link of it
thus not only does democracy make every
man forget his ancestors but it hides
his descendants and separates his
contemporaries from him it throws him
back forever upon himself alone and
threatens in the end to confine him
entirely within the solitude of his own
heart
professor Livermore was visibly shaken
at the end of that passage and I
remember finding myself perplexed that
this very impressive person for whom I
already had great respect was shaken by
a passage from one of our reading
assignments I was perplexed because at
that time I didn't take our assignments
all that seriously
after class I walked alone with my
thoughts along a leafy sidewalk near the
diag I was thinking rather hard about
professor Livermore's reaction to that
passage trying to make sense of it and
finally I realized professor Livermore
was moved by that passage because what
we're studying here is actually
important and so maybe I should take
this work seriously and so with some
fits and starts I began to do that that
walk changed the course of my college
career about 18 months later near the
end of my junior year I was again
walking by myself this time along the
sidewalk in front of angel Hall the
trees were just starting to get their
leads I had recently written a paper
about a book by 18th century French
philosopher jean-jacques Rousseau I
really enjoyed writing that paper and I
started to think about the reasons for
that I remember thinking I like the
analytical work that I'm doing in my
history and philosophy classes and I
really like the writing and then I
thought I should go to law school
because as a lawyer I'll get to do both
of those things that walk set the course
from my professional career looking back
years later I realized that there was
something special about those walks
something that made possible the
insights that I had during them that
something was solitude now by solitude I
don't mean being physically alone there
were plenty of other people around
during those walks by solitude rather I
mean the condition of being alone with
your thoughts an absence of input from
other minds as Micra when and I put it
in lead yourself first that condition
being alone with my thoughts allowed me
to do some analytical thinking during
those walks and it allowed me to be
introspective to look inside myself to
see what was going on there and to make
some life decisions as a result
but those walks might not have turned
out the same way today because if I did
those walks today I might instead be
doing this looking at my phone or I
might be listening to a podcast and if
we're doing either of those things we're
not alone with our thoughts we're
bringing someone else's thoughts or
someone else's emotions oftentimes not
positive ones inside our heads and so if
there had been smartphones back in 1987
I might not have had those insights
about school and about the kinds of work
that I found fulfilling because I might
have been looking at Facebook or
someone's Twitter feed instead solitude
used to be something that came as a
matter of course to almost everyone but
today we are losing solitude without
even realizing it mostly because of
these handheld devices and social media
apps that are quite deliberately
designed to be addictive solitude today
is like a beautiful animal whose habitat
is being destroyed solitude now takes a
conscious choice to put away our phones
to be with our thoughts and to access
the richness that awaits us there I
first started thinking seriously about
solitude back in 2010 when I was having
a beer with my Kirwan at Conor O'Neill's
on Main Street Mike was an Army officer
an active duty then studying to get his
master's degree in leadership psychology
here at the University of Michigan he
had been deployed to the Middle East
three times Mike's an extrovert and I'm
an introvert but we ended up talking
about our respective experiences with
solitude Mike talked about how during
his first deployment to Iraq he would
walk rather than ride to the chow hall
each day a mile each way and
temperatures around 100 degrees on some
of those walks he would think about a
leadership problem he was facing another
walks he would steady himself
emotionally I talked about my barn
office in norther
Michigan in the woods overlooking Upper
Lake Huron that's that's the view from
my barn office this is it four slides in
this presentation
low-tech whole thing's very low-tech so
I always say I get an extra 20 IQ points
in that office because I don't have any
cell service or internet connection
there so I don't have part of my brain
wondering if I've gotten some email or
text or whether there might be something
interesting on some website it's like
having all the cookies taken off of my
brain I guess I don't really know what
cookies are but I'm told I'm told that
fits so I'm able to focus completely on
whatever I'm doing in that office and so
whatever I'm working on in that office
seems to go pretty well at the end of
that conversation with Mike we decided
to write a book about solitude and that
book became lead yourself first like
Lindsay said we spent seven years
researching and writing it and we
learned that successful people have used
solitude throughout history often times
without recognizing it as such and we
learned that solitude comes in different
forms there's the big form of solitude
like Thoreau spending months alone at
his cabin on Walden Pond or me going up
to my barn office for a couple of days
to write an opinion but solitude comes
in smaller more accessible forms - you
can be alone with your thoughts when
you're walking to or from class or when
you wake up in the morning or if you
drive somewhere and during those times
you can choose to think about a specific
subject or problem I call that focused
reflection these things are easy to do
we just have to put our phones in
airplane mode for a little while Mike
and I also learned that solitude
enhances a number of qualities that make
people wiser more successful more
fulfilled one of those qualities is
clarity and that's what I found during
my walks around campus complex problems
are solved by careful and
little thinking and that kind of
thinking happens only in solitude Dwight
Eisenhower used solitude to think
clearly during World War two he had a
practice of writing memoranda to himself
as a way of thinking through complex
decisions most notably he did that on
June 3rd 1944 as a way of thinking
through the decisions he would make on
d-day and because of that memo as we
described in the book when that day came
Eisenhower made the right decisions
another quality that solitude enhances
is emotional balance I remember when I
was in law school I would after final
exams each spring I would drive up north
and fly fish and camp by myself in the
woods up there that was emotionally
restorative after the stress of final
exams I might have to do that after this
talk as well I'll sit it's a bad time of
year but being connected with nature
rather than being connected with your
phone can bring you to a more peaceful
place solitude also allows us to reflect
before we react Holocaust survivor
Viktor Frankl is credited with this
quote between stimulus and response
there is a space in that space is our
power to choose our response social
media reduces that space to nothing but
solitude along gates that space it
allows us to reflect on the reasons why
someone might be acting in a way we
don't like and if we do that honestly if
we do that with a measure of grace we
often find that those reasons have
nothing to do with us and sometimes
those reasons lead us to have sympathy
for the other person
maybe that person had a difficult
childhood or maybe someone she loves is
gravely ill where at first we feel anger
solitude can bring magnanimity and peace
the last quality bring
all the others together moral courage
moral courage is what we need when we're
subject to moral criticism moral
criticism is when someone says you're
not simply mistaken because of what you
believe or what you choose to do but
that you're a bad person because of
those things the Reverend Martin Luther
King jr. was subject to intense moral
criticism during his leadership of the
Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 to 56 one
night in January 1956 King came home
around 11:30 p.m. King's Pulitzer
prize-winning biographer David Garrow
said that this was the most important
night in King's life King's wife Coretta
and their baby daughter Yolanda were
already asleep the phone rang the caller
said we're going to blow your brains out
and blow up your house those were not
idle threats in those days
King hung up the phone and felt
something start to break inside of him
he sat down alone in solitude at the
kitchen table as King described it later
he said Lord I'm down here trying to do
what's right but I must confess that I'm
weak now I'm faltering I'm losing my
courage and then King said he heard an
inner voice saying Martin Luther stand
up for righteousness stand up for truth
and lo I will be with you until the end
of the world he promised never to leave
me never to leave me alone
no never alone no never alone he
promised never to leave me never to
leave me alone
King knew very well the dangers that he
faced in the service of his cause but
from that night forward he never again
feared what any man might do to him
Kings faith was one of his first
principles in life I urge every one of
you to reflect on your first principles
to identify them in periodically to
assess how well your actions conform to
them if you do that you'll find yourself
starting to become an inner directed
person rather than an externally
directed one you'll be less needy for
the praise or approval of others and
when they criticize you you'll be more
resilient because if you do these things
the praise or criticism that will matter
most to you is your own I know there's a
lot of pressure these days always to do
things in groups
believe me I felt that pressure myself
over the years so I will tell you this
give yourself permission to spend time
in solitude in solitude you can find
clarity and peace and courage you can
transcend the entropy around you there
is a glory and a fulfillment waiting
inside of every one of you if only you
have the discipline to seek it thank you
[Applause]