Re-Enchantment: Solitude and the Cost of Constant Hurry

O'Connell describes how his initial boredom in the wilderness—that uncomfortable confrontation with unfilled time—eventually dissolved into what he calls a "meditative stupor." It's precisely this transition that our constant digital engagement prevents.

We've developed a pathological aversion to boredom. The moment we feel that twinge of emptiness, we reach for our phones. We've forgotten that boredom is the doorway to creativity, self-knowledge, and deeper perception.

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be truly bored? To stare at a wall, to watch clouds pass overhead, to study a leaf without taking a picture of it?

These moments aren't wasteful—they're essential. They're the means through which we process our experiences, integrate new information, and access parts of ourselves that remain hidden in the rush of daily life.

The most significant shift in O'Connell's wilderness experience came when he stopped measuring time by the clock and started experiencing it through natural rhythms—the movement of light across the forest floor, the changing sounds of birds throughout the day, the subtle shifts in temperature. ... continue reading the article 

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Transcript

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This is Heliox, where evidence meets empathy. Independent, moderated, timely, deep, gentle, clinical, global, and community conversations about things that matter. Breathe easy. We go deep and lightly surface the big ideas. Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today, we're jumping into something really interesting, Solitude, how we experience time. It's all based on this fantastic Guardian article by Mark O'Connell you sent over. Right. Splendid isolation. It's about his, well, his experiment 24 hours doing basically nothing out in nature. Exactly. And our mission today is really to unpack what he found, you know, those insights he got from just stopping and how that relates to, well, our lives, which often feel so rushed. Yeah, it's a feeling I think many of us recognize. O'Connell captures it really well, that sort of daydream of finding a pause button almost. A secret level, he calls it, like from old video games. Exactly, a place outside the usual flow of time. And it wasn't just a casual thought for him, was it? It stemmed from a real kind of growing anxiety about time as he hit middle age. That feeling that everything takes too long, but life's also somehow flashing by. Yeah, that exact tension. It's quite unsettling, that feeling, isn't it? It really is. He found parenthood really amplified it. The constant schedules, watching kids grow up so incredibly fast. Oh, definitely. Those little moments, a funny mispronunciation, a baby phase gone before you know it. Right. And he felt he wasn't always maybe present enough for them. Which then made him think about his own childhood, didn't it? He called it a lost civilization he hadn't really thought much about. Yeah. And it's fascinating how that personal feeling, that desire for a different kind of time, leads him to this wilderness solo. Okay. Let's get into that. It's not just going camping. No, definitely not. It's quite deliberate. Isolating yourself, minimal gear, really minimal. The idea is to just confront yourself in time differently. So he goes to Dartmoor, finds this spot, a clearing near a river, and makes a circle. Yep, a symbolic circle about 10 meters across. And the rule was strict. Stay inside it for 24 hours. And do nothing. Like literally nothing. Pretty much. No phone, no books, no fire, no food even. And just solitude, unmediated. Wow. That's intense. It is. And that intensity is kind of the point, forcing that confrontation with just being. Yeah. It's interesting, too, how his view of nature had been a bit maybe detached before. Right, like a backdrop. Yeah. But worries about climate change, feeling disconnected himself, that started to shift things for him. He wanted to understand it, not just look at it. And he dipped his toes in this before, hadn't he? A retreat with Way of Nature UK, another solo try. He had. And you get the sense those earlier times started to break down some of his maybe cynicism about it all. So what do you think he took from those earlier retreats that helped here? I think it must be that core idea from Andres Roberts, the Way of Nature co-founder, the value of slowness. Slowness. Yeah. The idea that doing nothing in nature, really letting yourself slow down, can be genuinely transformative. Robert sees the wilderness solo as a kind of ritual almost for getting perspective in times of change. Exactly. Stepping outside the everyday rush to see where you stand. And he talks about re-enchantment, which I find really interesting. Re-enchantment, like getting past just pure logic. Yeah, peeling back that adult rational layer to find a more maybe childlike wonder. Seeing ourselves in nature, not separate from it. That definitely seems to connect to where O'Connell ends up. but it wasn't easy finding a spot, was it? He mentions the issue of land access in England. Oh yeah, that's a really practical, important point he makes. Less than 1% of people owning half the land. It makes finding truly wild, accessible places for this kind of thing quite difficult. It does show how bigger structures affect even these really personal quests. But okay, he finds a spot. Then what? The famous boredom kicks in. Instantly, sounds like. He really emphasizes how little there is to do, But that boredom, he says, it's instructive. It's just raw time. Time without filler. And he deliberately didn't have a watch or anything. No, nothing. And that's crucial. Without constantly checking the time, that anxiety about how you're using it starts to fade a bit. It makes you think about how tied our idea of time is to clocks, to industry. Neil Postman wrote about that, right? How we became time servers. Exactly. We've sort of lost touch with natural rhythms, the sun, the seasons in favor of the clock's demand. So what did he do? Just sit there? Well, yeah, but he describes these incredibly simple things. Drinking water, looking really closely at leaves, seeing them as tiny worlds, and just looking at a beech tree. He mentions not knowing all the names for its parts, and somehow that made it feel more real, not less. Interesting. Less labeling, more experiencing. Seems like it. And that's when the shift happens. The boredom melts into what he calls a meditative stupor. Okay. Like he's tuning into the forest's frequency. hearing the river, the birds, the leaves, but without that constant need to analyze it all. He found his secret level then, maybe? In a way, yeah. Just not quite how he might have pictured it. And this leads to a deeper shift in consciousness. It seems so. He starts feeling like he's part of it all. An organism among organisms, he says. Wow. And more than that, a sense that the place itself is somehow aware of him. Which he calls strangely beautiful and quietly moving. Almost spiritual, you might say. That reminds me a bit of Emerson in his essay, Nature. Absolutely. Emerson talked about that occult relation between man and the vegetable, that feeling of connection, of not being alone in the woods. And Emerson also wrote about shedding your years in nature, becoming like a child again. Which is exactly what starts happening to O'Connell next, isn't it? Yeah. Memories of his own childhood just start popping up. Those long, unstructured days playing outside, the kind of immersive, imaginative play. And then he connects that to his own son, right? Yeah. And his son's toy rabbit, realizing how fleeting that childhood magic is. Mm-hmm. And that brings a real moment of self-reflection for him. He sees how he often rushes his son, imposing his own time anxiety. Pushing his son out of those secret levels he himself remembers so fondly. Ouch. Yeah. But then comes the rabbit, his own childhood rabbit. His wife brought it. That's amazing. That's awful surprise, yeah. And seeing it triggers this huge reaction in him, a shock of recognition. The toy suddenly feels alive. Wow. Not just nostalgia then. No, much deeper, like time folded in on itself. Past meeting present. And it leads to this really powerful, cathartic mourning for his lost childhood. Right there in the woods. That moment with the rabbit, it feels like the absolute core of the whole 24 hours. I think so too. That raw emotion. Completely unexpected. It shows what can happen when you just allow yourself to be there, fully open, no agenda. And the return journey sounds like it was handled really well, too. Yeah, he talks about the peace of the rainy morning, seeing the river with fresh eyes, and how Andrus Roberts guided them back slowly, preserving that sense of solitude for as long as possible. Maintaining the quiet as they re-entered the world. Right. It suggests that integration peace is just as important as the isolation itself, letting the insights settle rather than having them shattered by the immediate return to noise and demands. So wrapping up this deep dive, for me, the big takeaway is just how profound it can be to intentionally step out of that time-driven rush, to immerse yourself in nature even briefly. It offers a different perspective on time, doesn't it? A chance for reconnection with nature and maybe with hidden parts of ourselves. Absolutely. And for anyone listening who feels that constant pressure, that feeling of being overwhelmed by time, O'Connell's story is, well, it's really thought-provoking. It really is. It suggests that maybe through simplicity, through seeking out a bit of that solitude, we can find our own moments of insight, our own kind of secret level. So here's something to maybe mull over. How could you create your own version of that, a space or maybe just a specific time where you deliberately slow down, let go of the agenda and just observe what might come up for you in that kind of quiet presence? Thanks for listening today. Four recurring narratives underlie every episode. Boundary dissolution, adaptive complexity, embodied knowledge, and quantum-like uncertainty. These aren't just philosophical musings, but frameworks for understanding our modern world. We hope you continue exploring our other podcasts, responding to the content, and checking out our related articles at heliocspodcast.substack.com.