If you feel lonely, take heart. You are not the only one.
For some folks, finding and making good, true friends is very difficult. As adults, we find that most of our time is spent at work and at home, caring for our jobs and our families. Whether single or married, there are countless things that demand our attention and our time on a daily basis. And when the feelings of loneliness arise we sense a need to get out and meet someone, anyone, just to fill that void.
The next time this happens to you, take a step back and ask yourself these two questions.
“Do I really need companionship? Or do I need to learn to be alone with myself?”
If the answer to both of the questions is yes, then the first friendship you need to develop is with yourself.
Solitude doesn’t mean you’ll become a hermit. Solitude simply means learning to spend more time alone with yourself and less on the dependency of the company of others.
Have you noticed the lengths some folks go to find fulfillment in life? From massive televisions to faster cars to more expensive clothes, some people try to buy a little piece of happiness. The joy lasts for awhile till the novelty wears off. Still others date several people at once and try to acquire more acquaintances than necessary to fill the need for acceptance and comfort. On the surface it appears to be easy to run away from yourself from time to time, but in this day and age a return to the blessings of aloneness would be a great benefit to many.
How is being alone a blessing? How will learning to enjoy your own company help you find happiness?
There are many reasons to embrace a life of solitude. First and foremost, a life spent in solitude frees a person to examine themselves without the constant contact of others to distract them. Finding out what makes you tick, and who you are deep inside, can be quite frightening for some. For others, however, finding the core of their being and learning who they are and what they stand for is the greatest life lesson.
Solitude, even in small chunks, helps you to focus on where you are and what direction you are going. Taking time to journal alone everyday can help you pinpoint what actions you might need to take as well as gauging how your feelings ebb and flow each day. Closing your eyes to meditate gives you insights that you may not be able to see with eyes wide open.
For divorced people, solitude can be the proverbial monster under the bed. When a person has been married for a time, a sort of dependence on another person to fill all of his/her needs is created. When that marriage is no longer, a huge gaping void is left behind and the grief can be intense. Some people immediately try to fill that void with another relationship (the classic “rebound”) because the pain and emptiness is too intense.
If those people would allow themselves to experience the pain, acknowledge the void and spend time with themselves in healing, the recovery would be complete. As it is, we’re a culture of runners, always running away from this pain and that grievance, hoping to find the happiness that seems to elude us. The simplest yet not so easy task of learning to enjoy our own company can be the greatest blessing during our times of intense grief and sorrow.
Giving up on relationships is not what solitude means. Solitude means nurturing the most important relationship you can have with a person, and that relationship is with yourself. Selfish? From the outside it may appear that way, but instead of a selfishness of greed, our seeking solitude is a selfishness of good. It is self-healing. And that type of selfishness brings about the happiness we need.
When we are happy, the world around us is blessed with our joy. And what better blessing can we bestow upon others than our own true happiness?
