There is a whole movement dedicated to unplugging from digital devices on the theory that they are turning us all into slack-jawed, empty-eyed, pasty-faced zombies. Having explored that option fully, I recently experienced an extended break from digital connection. This was not due to any virtue on my part. It was in a medical setting that allowed no phones, no laptops, no exceptions.

I had been afraid I’d go stir-crazy. Which I promptly did. Navel-gazing entails some unexpected hazards. “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,” wrote George Eliot, “it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

It turns out that you don’t actually die. But the silence initially feels hostile — like the hush of a funeral parlor, or the stillness that accompanies loneliness, or the quiet of seething contempt. For someone of my temperament, it is an opportunity for uninterrupted self-recrimination.