Solitude as Homeland
Welcome to the Refractions Series, where we explore the intersection of tradition and modernity, culture and technology, through a Vietnamese lens. Each essay in this collection sheds light on the way we navigate identity in a globalized world, from the roots of our heritage to the far-reaching influence of technology. For more essays in the series, visit the Refractions page.
We rarely talk about solitude as something beautiful — let alone essential. It’s usually framed as a lack: of company, of connection, of being truly seen. But for me, and perhaps for many shaped by similar currents, solitude is not a punishment or a void. It’s a kind of home.
I grew up watching my elders inhabit long stretches of quiet without any apparent need for speech. A father lost in the rising drift of cigarette smoke; gaze distant. A grandmother staring out the window into hazy afternoon light, seeming to remember another life entirely, wrapped in a stillness so profound it absorbed the small sounds of the house. They weren’t necessarily lonely — they were still. Inward. Present in a way that bustling Western notions of constant connection never quite seemed to grasp.
Perhaps it’s this inheritance: a current within Vietnamese culture, for all its deep familial closeness, that is also steeped in a profound inwardness.
There’s almost a Buddhist quality in how pain is handled — quietly, carried within, without outward spectacle. A Confucian echo, too, in the emphasis on enduring rather than expressing every tremor. We share food more readily than we share feelings. We grieve through quiet rituals — the slow making of tea, the warmth of the cup a silent offering against the chill of loss. We show love not through grand declarations, but by staying. By being reliably present.
So much of this Vietnamese inheritance, as I witnessed it, involves learning how to endure moments alone — not from a lack of connection, but often from a deep wish not to burden others. We hold our suffering closely, like a stone carried in the pocket, its edges slowly polished smooth by the friction of our silence.
This profound inwardness inevitably shaped me. Even as I later found language — in writing, within diaspora communities, through political analysis — I held onto solitude as my first, my native tongue.
And I’ve come to understand: solitude is not weakness. It is often the beginning of clarity. It became that quiet homeland — the necessary internal territory where I could finally find the room to write these words. To remember my history not just through recited facts, but through the resonance of feeling. To make a tentative peace with the parts of myself that feel fractured, hybrid, perpetually undefined.
In this fractured world — where noise is mistaken for importance, where presence is measured in clicks and metrics — the capacity for solitude feels quietly subversive. And, in its own way, deeply Vietnamese.
Not because we prefer to be alone,
but because we — or those who came before us —
mastered how to survive, endure,
and even find clarity
when we are.
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