Magical Little Lonely

I love loneliness.

And I’m not someone who wants to be alone in life. 

I don’t want to live my life autonomously. Quite the contrary, I want to have a partnership and a family… and have rare, incredible and intimate connections with them.

But honestly… it’s a beautiful thing I’ve only recently come to understand… loneliness.

There are these moments of my week. Maybe I’m sitting on the couch on a Tuesday night. Alone. The TV is not on. I notice my mind drift off about being somewhere else, somewhere I’m not alone. 

In this mind-drifted day dream, I’m with friends, or I’m on a date with that person I wanted to get to know, or I’m with my significant other in some far off country. 

Then I immediately juxtapose the day dream with where I am at the time of my dreaming, which is in my apartment, entirely and quietly and soberingly alone. 

And this thought can be perceived as a little depressing. 

But, I’ve come to this amazing realization about those moments. It started with an epiphany I had once, and now it’s never far away, and it always comes back. In these times where one might feel a disappointment from that sobering moment that follows the day dream, I let go. And I reach for this new opening, where I pull out of the standard “I’m alone” thought and instead what unfolds is a totally new twist on what it means to be alone right now, where I am alone right now, how I am alone right now.

As a 28 year old I realize: This is probably the most intimate I'm ever going to be with myself. This may be one of the most sincere moments of solitude I will have with my life.

And that experience of self is actually a wonderful and beautiful and very sacred thing.

I look at the palms of my hands. I realize there’s a whole system of life here within me.

A moment with my own self is actually an amazing thing. It’s incredible. A blessing. A miracle.

Anytime I may feel alone, I remember this epiphany I had, and immediately, I no longer feel alone. I just feel grateful to have this moment with myself, in this life.

If you think about the impermanence of life, and change, and all the good, and the challenges, and all the in-between most likely coming your way, you look at this aloneness as something to be cherished. A special little moment between you, your life and you.

As a 28 year old, I’m so grateful to have had the two most lonely years of my life recently.

In these years, I’ve learned so much about myself. I’ve dived into the loneliness and read books about life, I’ve experienced activities with others but I’ve always came back home to myself after. I’ve traveled by myself. I’ve gone to movies by myself. I’ve taken classes by myself.

In these last couple of years, when I was unhappy with my line of work, I had nothing to distract me from that fact when I got home. Nothing else going on, making it tolerable. So I took the Myers Briggs personality test to figure out what I’d be happy doing. I figured out what I wanted to do with my life (that alone was monumental). Then I began the steps to do it.

I ended up facing fears and worries and patterns, pulling off seemingly impossible financial feats to get myself to other countries for the first time in ten years to fulfill my passions. And then I went to five more.

I dare say I even got so lonely that I found myself.

I built a relationship with myself as I worked through phases and mentalities and shifts of my life, alone.

I love my loneliness.

In those moments when I am in my apartment alone or out on the beach, alone, I get to really get my experience here on spaceship earth. I get to have it.

I get to really feel and get to know my surroundings - MY experience as I experience it. 

I get to know my life. What it feels like for me as a human to be alive. With no person or thing explaining or altering or adding or taking away from that. No other influence to it.

But really the magical thing about loneliness is the doorway it creates to my connection to the earth, to the life of this world.

In the moments I’m alone, I realize that it won’t always be exactly like this. There will come many moments in great company of others, of family, of loved ones. There will be moments of occupation of my mind, my body, my soul. Where my experience of life won’t be quite this solitary.

No, it won’t always be like this. And this is actually quite comfortable. Nothing is wrong; there’s nothing going on that I can’t handle or am not handling. 

In these moments, I’m not out searching for something I’m not, trying to be something I’m not, looking to be around people I’m not.

And then, I find that I get out more for the things that are for me. I connect more with the people that are for me. 

It’s like this indirect weeding process of the facets of life that don’t serve me: the people who aren’t really a fit, or the situations where we tend to push ourselves to do something we don’t totally want to do, or just expenditures of our energy that end up being rather pointless. 

Knowing and being comfortable in my loneliness, I don’t reach out for these less authentically-for-me experiences, and then… this build up of energy is created… which allows for an opening of the most true and sincere experiences and interactions for me. 

Funny… My aloneness. It creates connection.