Solitude Observation

For my experiment, I chose to conduct it at my local Big Y on a Sunday afternoon, a time I thought it would be busiest. For the sake of looking purposeless and utterly stagnant, I planted myself by the deli counter where I knew I would see the most people rushing in and out with haste. I set my mom loose on the store and handed her my purse, while concealing my phone in my coat pocket where the timer could count down from ten minutes unnoticed. When my mom walked away, I felt an unusual surge of separation anxiety. As a child, I always seemed to lose her in stores so I would make sure to stand by her. But then, as I stood all by myself surrounded with people rushing into the area with purpose, I felt like a lost child once again. The people …show more content…
Without purpose or a place, I felt like a nuisance who didn’t belong. If I wasn’t consuming, I was somehow draining the area. Søren Kierkegaard once said “It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.” I believe this can be applied to this situation as well, when I was alone with nothing visible to keep me “occupied” people grew wary of me, like they’d catch the plague of purposelessness from me. Playing off Kierkegaard, perhaps it is an epigram of our modern society that when you aren’t consuming or running around to keep up with the fast paced life you’re supposed to have, you have no place. I believe you had us do this assignment to highlight the importance our society as a whole places on consumerism and leading a busy lifestyle. This experiment confirmed what I already assumed about human nature and how going against the grain will turn some heads, but I was still disheartened by it. It’s sort of sad that you can’t even stand in a grocery store doing absolutely nothing, for only ten minutes, and receive stares like you’re a criminal or somehow failing at your