Solitude is Not the Worst Thing

At some point, you may find yourself alone.

When you take some time to yourself, you get to see what you actually think. You don’t need to worry that you will have a thought that could offend someone. You may find it in you to explore some thoughts more deeply, alone with yourself. Perhaps these are the thoughts that truly mattered to you, that you never found the time to reflect on.

If you train your mind to be peaceful and reasonable, you do not need to see yourself as an unwelcome enemy to be avoided. You can rejoice in the comfort of yourself as your own companion.

Like anything else, solitude is not good on its own and is not to be sought out in excess. But when it happens, understand that this is not the worst thing.

Take it as an opportunity to endure the silence, or the mental chatter if that is what you have, to actually see who you are when no one else is there to expect you to think or behave in one way or another.

Know that in their expectation, they often would guide you into being what they thought you were or should be. Yet you may find that you are not the person you felt the need to be when in their presence.

In solitude, you can seek clarity from everything, for you are not truly alone if you are watching shows, reading the thoughts and beliefs of others, or keeping yourself occupied with busy and needless work.

You are alone when you allow yourself to be aware that you are indeed alone.

When alone, you can take a moment to suspend all the concerns you had regarding other people in your life. You can let them melt away because for the moment they don’t matter.

In your aloneness, you may find that you are always busy, but for what? Most of the time, you were doing things for others, or your fear of how they would react if you didn’t do what was expected. Your mind may have been too preoccupied with others, and not enough with your true self.

Or you may find that you don’t understand this experience of being alone. You had always strayed from it, always been with other people, things, or ideas that didn’t allow you to actually be alone.

There is a good chance that if you aren’t ready to be alone, your mind will quickly recall the times you had with other people. It will aim to fill that feeling of being alone with experiences, even if just simulated in your mind. Then that is something to be aware of – that you do not seem to be ready to be alone. Or perhaps, you need further practice in being alone.

Even if you do allow yourself to remain just with yourself, fully alone, that foreign sense of being with yourself may concern or frighten you.

But why should it? You are not some threat – you are yourself.

And the lack of something to think or do or someone to share an experience with shouldn’t be the worst thing.

There is something worth learning if you would spend just a bit of time alone with yourself, and deal with the temporary pains that may come with it. You may find that you are not the person you thought you were or that being alone helped you to think more clearly. You may find that being with others had actually been a distraction from something that was truly important to you - something you had strayed away from in time.

Alone does not have to mean lonely. It can mean a path to true self-understanding.

When alone, you may find a hidden strength or ability within that you had never perceived before, as in the presence of others, you never needed to tap into it.

Needless to say, there is value in family, friendship, and communication, but it is also well worth learning how to be alone and seeing that there are fruits to be gained with this path as well.

We may perceive being alone as meaning that we have been abandoned, or that we are unworthy. But sometimes it is worth consciously choosing solitude, or embracing it. Yourself is nothing to be feared, after all.