I think sometimes if you are alone, you are freer because your

The words of Aung San Suu Kyi — “I think sometimes if you are alone, you are freer because your time is your own” — fall softly, like the voice of one who has spent long years in quiet reflection. Yet within their gentleness lies the power of a mountain. They speak of a freedom that the world often forgets: the freedom of solitude, the sacred liberty that comes when the soul stands alone, beholden to no master, no clock, no voice but its own. In these words, Suu Kyi — a woman who endured years of house arrest and isolation — reveals not despair, but inner triumph. Her solitude became her sanctuary, and her silence, her strength.

To be alone is often feared by the many. People fill their days with noise, company, and distraction, believing that loneliness is a curse. But Suu Kyi, through the crucible of confinement, discovered a different truth: that within solitude lies the purest form of freedom. When one walks alone, one’s time becomes unshackled. There are no demands, no expectations, no masks to wear for others. The hours stretch wide and quiet, offering a mirror to the self — a chance to listen to the whispers of the heart, long drowned by the world’s clamor. In such stillness, one begins to see not what is lost, but what is eternal.

This wisdom has echoed through the ages. Consider Henry David Thoreau, who retreated to the woods of Walden Pond, not to flee humanity, but to rediscover it through simplicity. “I went to the woods,” he wrote, “because I wished to live deliberately.” There, alone, he found that time — once divided by duty and desire — became his own again. Each sunrise was his teacher, each ripple on the water his companion. Solitude became his classroom, and freedom his daily bread. Like Suu Kyi, he learned that the truest liberty is not granted by governments or laws, but by the courage to claim one’s own time and live according to one’s own truth.

Freedom, as Suu Kyi reminds us, is not merely the right to speak or to move — it is the power to choose how one’s hours are spent. When we are surrounded by others, our time often becomes entangled in the web of obligations, duties, and expectations. But in solitude, the chain is broken. The moments belong wholly to us. It is in such moments that we can think deeply, dream freely, and act without compromise. This is not selfishness, but sovereignty — the rightful dominion over one’s own existence.

Yet this freedom of solitude is not without its trials. For to claim one’s time is also to confront oneself. In the silence of being alone, there is no one to blame, no one to distract, no one to fill the void. Many cannot bear this, for it forces the soul to face its naked truth. But those who persevere through that discomfort emerge transformed — stronger, clearer, freer. Suu Kyi’s years of isolation were heavy with loneliness, yet she turned that loneliness into wisdom. Her solitude became her forge, where patience, resilience, and clarity were tempered into weapons of peace.

There is also a quiet heroism in her words. To find freedom in solitude is to defy those who would use isolation as punishment. Her captors may have locked her within walls, but they could not imprison her spirit. In the stillness of her days, she discovered what the ancients knew: that the mind of the free can never be bound. Like a flame in darkness, it burns more brightly when unobserved. Her solitude did not break her; it refined her, until even her silence spoke louder than the shouts of armies.

The lesson, then, is clear and timeless: do not fear being alone. Seek, at least once in your life, to know the taste of solitude. Guard your time as a sacred inheritance. Withdraw from the noise, if only for a while, and let your thoughts walk beside you. In that stillness, you will meet yourself — not the self that pleases others, but the one that waits beneath, patient and eternal.

So, to you who wander amid the haste of the world, remember this teaching: freedom begins when time becomes your own. Make space for silence. Walk alone beneath the open sky. Listen to the rhythm of your own breathing, and there you will find the first pulse of liberty. For as Aung San Suu Kyi reminds us, solitude is not emptiness — it is the soul’s most faithful companion, and the truest path to freedom everlasting.