If the crisis of identity is the crisis of the twentieth century, then we must look well to this aspect of the nurture of the twentieth century child. We are standing on the threshold of the cosmos, and we do not know who we are. Either we discover our identity and move into a new dimension of spiritual existence along with our technical conquests of time and space, or we shrink back into sub-existence as a race of well-trained clerical assistants, timidly feeding data into gigantic computers to find out what to do next. Who is taking “time out” to probe for new dimensions which will open up a way of life not now imagined? Who is dreaming dreams? Who is seeing visions? Where are the solitary ones?

They are all about, but they are too few, and we make it very hard for them. Are icy mountain peaks their only natural habitat? No, for solitude can be full of joy, it can vibrate with life and warmth. Rather than bereft and isolated, in times of solitude we may be more deeply in tune with creation than human contact alone could ever permit. He who has felt that sense of glad at-homeness in the universe knows solitude’s deepest joy. The child in times of aloneness is not stranger to such happiness. A ten-year-old boy in Dr. Klingberg’s group writes, “Another time I was up on the hill near my house. I went there and was looking at the flowers, and then I thought, ‘So beautiful. Has God really done this?’ And I felt so happy.”

–Elise Boulding in Pendle Hill Pamphlet 125: Children and Solitude