Life Wisdom - By Words of Taoism - Let solitude refreshes you - Taoism

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Time alone is a precious commodity that connects all aspects of your life.Free resources, books and more on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://wordsoftaoism.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠My blog ⁠���⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://taoismteachings.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠Music I use, as a playlist: ⁠⁠⁠https://tinyurl.com/spotifyzenplaylist⁠⁠⁠

Welcome to Life Wisdom. Today's reflection is for those moments when the need to step back quietly appears. The need for space, for silence, and also for the guilt that often follows us there, for the feeling of being absent when we finally rest, and for the tension of trying to take care of ourselves in a world that rarely stops asking for our presence. Listen to today's episode as an invitation to look differently at solitude as the place that allows us to become more whole. To slowly transform and to return more fully to life. I am Chen Li, author of the blog Word of Taoism on Substack, and you're listening to my podcast.

Moments when we feel the need to withdraw, this feeling is not exactly a desire to flee. nor a rejection of others. It's more something similar to a need to sleep after a long day or the need to eat when the body is hungry. It's a need for silence, for space, to spend time alone with oneself. This need is natural, deeply human, and yet something in us resists honoring it

because the moment it appears a voice rises to contest it. a voice that says you should be available, others need you, or that withdrawing might be a form of selfishness. This voice isn't always loud, but it knows how to be persistent, and it transforms a legitimate need into a source of unease. It makes solitude a fault before it has even begun. We withdraw to rest, but guilt prevents us from truly resting. We are physically alone, yes, but mentally.

still in relationship, still in obligation, still under others' gaze. Look at how modern life works. Instant messages that expect immediate replies, social media that measures our existence by the number of our interactions, phones that make us reachable at every moment, in every place. Being unreachable has become almost immoral. being absent has become suspect. Our ancestors lived according to different rhythms than ours.

Life wasn't a continuous flow of presence and stimulation, but an alternation, sometimes imposed, sometimes chosen, between times of gathering and times of withdrawal, between moments of community and moments of silence. These rhythms, we have lost them. Technology has given us the power to be always connected, and this power has transformed into obligation. What was a possibility has become an expectation.

What was a choice has become a norm. This pressure is so pervasive that we end up internalizing it completely. We no longer need others to reproach us for our absence. We reproach ourselves. surveillance has become self-surveillance. The Taoist sages observed the world and saw everywhere the play of two forces they called yin and yang. Their insight, which wasn't a revealed truth,

but the fruit of long observation, was that these forces aren't opposites in conflict. Rather, they are partners that respond to each other, that engender each other mutually, that cannot exist without one another. Day isn't the enemy of night. It's its complement. Inhalation isn't the opposite of exhalation.

It's its other face. One calls for the other. One needs the other. One gives birth to the other. In the symbol of yin and yang, each half contains a point of the other color. The white contains black. The black contains black.

white. This means that even in the heart of solitude, relationship is present, and even in the heart of the most intense relationship, solitude is there. These two dimensions don't fight each other. They nourish each other mutually. They need each other to exist fully. Seen from this angle, solitude becomes the very condition of true presence. Without withdrawal, no true presence. Without inner silence, no true listening. Without time spent with oneself, no capacity to truly be with others.

Solitude and connection are two moments of the same movement, two phases of the same cycle, like the inhalation and exhalation of the same breath. But solitude is more than simple rest that prepares us to return to others. It's also a space where something can transform, something that cannot transform elsewhere. This understanding dissolves guilt by showing that it rests on a false opposition. Granting oneself solitude is precisely what allows us to have more to offer. Withdrawing can nourish relationship at its source, to take care of oneself in order to better take care of others.

Ultimately, withdrawing is simply giving oneself the possibility to change, to transform deeply. Our era likes to segment people between introverts and extroverts. Some recharge in solitude, others in relation. each has their nature, and this nature determines their needs. There's doubtless some truth in this distinction. But we're not all identical in our relationship to solitude and company, even having identified our primary trait as introvert or extrovert. Because from the Taoist perspective, this division becomes more porous.

We're never only one or the other. we oscillate between the two according to rhythms that are our own. There are moments when we need others and moments when we need ourselves. There are seasons of our life when connection predominates and seasons when withdrawal becomes necessary. The problem arises when we lose access to this natural movement, when we remain stuck in one pole without being able to reach, join the other when the need arises. Imagine a well. A well can give water day after day,

but this capacity to give depends on what happens in the depths, where an underground source regenerates, more or less quickly, depending on the seasons, the rains, what is drawn from it? The water that's drawn at the surface is replaced by water that rises from the depth. The well gives because it receives. Without this underground regeneration, it would dry up. One could continue lowering the bucket, but it would come up empty. We are like this well. We give others our attention, our presence, our energy, our love. This giving is beautiful. It's necessary. It's at the heart of what makes a human life. But this giving is sustainable only if it's fed by a source, and this source can draw from time spent with oneself. Thus solitude regenerates and allows us to fill

again. When we never grant the source time to regenerate, it will continually empty. Then we continue to be present physically, but with a hollow, exhausted, presence that has little left to offer. We're there physically, but something essential has withdrawn. Others sense it, even if they can't quite name it. We sense it ourselves, in this fatigue that never leaves us, in this irritability that rises over nothing, in this impression of never really being there. And we sense it too, in this muted stagnation, this impression. This impression. of no longer moving forward, of repeating the same patterns, of going in circles without understanding why. For solitude to play its role, of regeneration, but also of transformation,

it must be truly inhabited, and for that it must be freed from the guilt that poisons it. True solitude requires a form of permission, a permission we great. to grant ourselves, the permission to close the door, the permission to be unreachable, the permission to do nothing useful, to produce nothing to serve no one for a while. This permission is difficult to give in a culture that values constant productivity and availability.

But without it, solitude remains an empty shell. When this permission is truly granted, granted, something transforms. Solitude ceases to be an escape and becomes a return, a return to oneself, to what we are when we're not playing a role, meeting an expectation, fulfilling a function. A return to that part of us that the noise of social life constantly covers. A return to the source. In this return, we don't find the emptiness we feared. External silence of the world. External silence of allows us to hear what's happening inside. The absence of stimulation allows us to feel what's already there.

The space reveals itself as inhabited, inhabited by ourselves, by our presence to ourselves, by this companionship we are to ourselves, and that we so often neglect. And in this space, something becomes possible that isn't possible in this space, the noise of social life. We can truly look at ourselves. We can observe our thoughts without being interrupted, feel our emotions without having to contain them, question our habits without having to

justify them to anyone. This self-regard isn't always comfortable. It can reveal things we prefer not to see, patterns that repeat, fears that govern us, desires weed bear, But it's precisely this gaze that allows change. As long as we're caught in the flow of interactions, obligations, responses to give, we don't have space for this inner work. We react more than we act. We repeat more than we create. We maintain more than we transform.

Solitude opens a breach in this repetition. It creates a space where something new, can emerge, an understanding, a decision, a direction. This work can take very simple forms, writing in a journal, just for oneself, and discovering while writing what we truly thought, walking for a long time, long enough for surface thoughts to exhaust themselves, and for something deeper to rise, sitting with a difficult question, without trying to resolve it immediately, just letting it be there,

turning it over and over until clarity comes, or doesn't come, and that's fine too. It can also take more structured forms, reviewing one's life by periods to understand how we got here, identifying moments of bifurcation, choices that were made, those that were endured, looking at relationships that formed us, those that deformed us, those that perhaps still await us. This isn't rumination. Rumination goes in circles, always returns to the same point, transforms nothing.

It's rather an exploration, an archaeology of self, that seeks to understand in order to move forward differently. The transformation born from solitude isn't spectacular. It doesn't produce lightning revelations or sudden conversions. It works slowly, underground like water-carving stone. One day, we realize we no longer react the same way to a situation that would have once overwhelmed us. One day, we notice we've set a boundary we would never have dared set before. One day we discover that a fear that accompanied us forever has lost its grip.

These changes didn't come from nowhere. They came from those hours spent alone with oneself, from this invisible work that looks like nothing and yet changes everything. But solitude isn't only an inner laboratory. It's also more simply a place of rest and contemplation. These two dimensions, transformation and rest, don't oppose each other. They alternate. They complement each other. There are moments of solitude where we work on ourselves,

and moments where we only rest, watch the day change, let time pass without asking anything of it. This encounter with oneself can take a thousand forms, A silent walk in nature where thoughts settle gradually like dust in a glass of water, we've stopped stirring. An hour spent doing nothing in particular sitting by a window, solitary work, writing, gardening, cooking, where attention concentrates and the rest fades. Or simply staying in bed a little longer in the morning. in that space between night's end and the new day coming.

These moments aren't extraordinary, but they're precious because they remind us that we exist outside our usefulness, outside our roles, outside what we do for others. And then, after a time of true solitude, an inhabited solitude, fully consented to, whether contemplative or transformative, something happens.

There returns a kind of impulse, like a pleasure, like a desire to share, to talk, to listen, to be with. Because at this precise moment, the well has filled again and the water overflows of itself. Solitude hasn't distanced us from others. It has brought us back to them, but differently. We return changed, even in perceptive. Something has settled, something has clarified, something has transformed in the silence,

because the presence we offer after true solitude has another quality. It's a full presence, nourished available, a presence that can truly listen because it's no longer cluttered by its own inner noise, a presence that can truly see the other, because it took time to see itself. This quality of presence is the most precious thing we offer others, and it's cultivated paradoxically in solitude. Relationships that last and nourish are often those where each has learned, sometimes with difficulty, sometimes after misunderstandings, to preserve their space of withdrawal, those where we've finally understood that the other's absence isn't rejection. that their need for silence isn't escape. These relationships have found their rhythm,

a rhythm that's never acquired once and for all, but that readjusts, renegotiates, reinvents itself over time. Relationships that suffocate, on the other hand, are often those where solitude isn't permitted, those where any absence is experienced as betrayal, those where we demand constant presence from the other, total availability. These relationships end up exhausting both parties. They end up producing exactly what they feared.

Flight, withdrawal, distance, but a bitter distance, charge with resentment, instead of that healthy distance that nourishes closeness and allows each to transform. Giving solitude its rightful place means recognizing that it's part of relationship as its necessary complement. It also means recognizing that it's part of our development, our maturation, our becoming. This rightful place isn't the same for everyone. Some need more solitude, others less. Some recharge in a few hours. Others need days.

There's no universal norm for the right balance. There's only our own balance, the one that corresponds to our nature, our rhythm, our moment in life. Finding this balance requires listening, listening to what our body and mind tell us. When the need for withdrawal makes itself felt, it often manifests through subtle signs,

a fatigue not explained by lack of sleep, Irritability rising over nothing, difficulty truly being present even when we're there, a sensation of going in circles without moving forward. These signs are messages. They tell us the well needs to fill, that something in us asks for space to settle, to clarify, perhaps to change. Ignoring them means sinking into exhaustion and stagnation. Listening to them means taking care of ourselves,

and therefore ultimately, movement between solitude and relationship can resemble the movement of the tide. The sea withdraws, and we might believe it's abandoning the shore. But this withdrawal is part of the cycle, and when it returns, it sometimes brings with it something from the depths.

Shells, seaweed, traces of what happened offshore. Sometimes too, it simply returns without particular treasure. And that's enough. What matters is that it returns renewed, transformed by its passage through the depths. We too withdraw and return. We move away into our solitude and we bring something back when we return. Thoughts that had time to mature. Emotions that had time to clarify.

a presence that had time to regenerate, and sometimes a transformation, even tiny, that will change our way of being with others. The withdrawal wasn't a loss. It was a preparation, invisible work, a silent metamorphosis. Taoist wisdom invites us to trust this movement, not to force it in one direction or the other,

to let the natural rhythm unfold, to listen to what's asked at each moment, to honor the need that presents itself without judging it. This trust is difficult in a world that constantly pushes us toward connection, that makes us feel guilty as soon as we withdraw. But it's essential. Without it, we remain prisoners of a rhythm that isn't ours, of a breath that's never truly complete.

Without it, we deprive ourselves of the space where transformation becomes possible. Perhaps the next time the need for solitude makes itself felt, we can welcome it differently as a signal to listen to rather than a weakness to fight, as care to grant ourselves rather than selfishness to suppress, as a space of transformation as much as rest. as a way to nourish love at its source rather than a withdrawal from love. And perhaps we can close the door without guilt, turn off the foam without anxiety, find ourselves alone without this feeling of being at fault. Perhaps we can truly inhabit this solitude, let it do its work of regeneration and transformation,

let it fill the well that had dried up. When the time comes, we'll reopen the door. We'll return to others carried by desire rather than obligation. The well will be full and will have something to offer, something that will have changed, even imperceptibly in the silence.