Solitude: Friend or foe?

What is it about solitude that terrifies us so? (At least most of us, anyways.) I’ve always said that I actually prize alone time because it gives me a chance to think, to pursue the things that I want to pursue, to get to know myself better. But, to be completely honest, I don’t think I’ve spent a single day in my entire existence completely and utterly alone. When I want to be alone, I just isolate myself physically from others – I lock myself in my room, close all the windows, and that’s it. But, I’ve always had the option of leaving my temporary hermit-dom to go talk to a family member in the living room or in the kitchen. When I hear stories of people who go off into the wild by themselves, I can’t help but wonder if I’d be able to do so myself, for even when I’m pretending to be a hermit, I’m never fully disconnected from the outside world – I’m checking my Facebook, am texting someone, reading news online, etc.

Part of the reason why I like to keep my mind busy and engaged all the time is because I’m not very good at dealing with my own thoughts and feelings. I will confess that it’s often the case when I purposely put off dealing with emotions because I don’t want to feel the hurt, the pain, etc. For me, at least, this is why solitude is so terrifying – it’s when all of the demons that live inside my mind come out to play. I tend to have so many thoughts in my mind at the same time that it feels as if it were spinning at light speed. Crazy, huh? Crazy, indeed!

Lately I’ve been realizing that my fear of solitude has been greatly unfounded. In fact, I’m willing to go as far as to say that solitude is highly misunderstood. I’m not a party girl by any means, but the last couple of months that I lived in Miami, I went out very, very frequently. I’d go out to dinner with friends, out for a drink, to the movies, coffee, anything – I really would accept most invitations that came my way. I have to admit that a great part of it was because I was going through a period of loss (heartbreak) and I didn’t want to deal with it. I’d do anything to get my mind off of the pain, the disappointment, and the rejection. I think that at the time I wasn’t ready to deal with it all, so I appreciate the efforts that my friends put into distracting me.

However, ever since I’ve been in Honduras, I’ve had almost no social life at all. Furthermore, I realized that my isolation has been greatly by choice; it’s as if I unconsciously forced myself into a period of loneliness just so that I could finally deal with my untouched emotions. Thankfully, it’s worked. I’ve come to see that there can be something very beautiful about solitude.

I’m usually the kind of person who tries to analyze everything, give logical explanations to all kinds of phenomena, and whose mind never rests. I’ve still got a long way to go before I can completely relax my mind, but the fact that I’ve started to make use of my alone time has certainly helped me tremendously. I realized that I don’t have to be afraid of the demons of my past anymore, for at the end of the day, everything I think is within myself, and as such, I have the power to control it. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I felt sad for having lost someone who I cared about, so I finally starting to deal with this pain. At the beginning I tried to analyze the whole situation, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong, or what the turning point had been, but I came to see that I’d never know the whole truth, and that the past was the past anyways. So, I focused on recovering the good memories I’d made with this person, letting them know that the past was the past, and asking for forgiveness for my mistakes, while accepting that they wouldn’t be a part of my present or my future, and that I would be okay. Little did I know that by befriending one of the demons, I’d invited all the others to come out and play. Little by little, I started uncovering things about myself that I wasn’t okay with, but that I knew I had to deal with now, for I’d neglected them in the past. Well, it suffices to say that it’s an ongoing process with no deadline.

The whole point of this blog was not really to talk about myself, but to let you see that there can be something very beneficial about solitude, and that we must not fear it. What’s worked for me is to seek a greater intimacy and understanding of myself by accepting my past mistakes and flaws. For others, the greatness in solitude may lie in a sense of relief of social obligations, etc. Whatever the reason, I advise all of you to find something that you enjoy about being alone, and to cultivate it. Take 20 minutes a day to just sit by yourself, disconnect from the world, relax, and just let a flow of thoughts invade your mind, without trying to resist them. Soon enough, your own demons will emerge, and terrifying at first, you’ll realize that they’re nothing but a super-sized bully of yourself. And how do we deal with bullies? Well, we stand up to them! If you’re not ready for this quite yet, then take your alone time as a chance to rediscover yourself. Think about your body, your thoughts, your personality, those distinct features that make you YOU, and go from there.

At this point you may be asking yourself, what’s the point of all this? Well, let me answer this by means of a quote: "When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others." The more progress you make, the more you’ll come to see that your relationships with others will start to transform before your very eyes. You’ll no longer feel the need to play games with people, or to make your actions dependent on social obligations. We live in a time when we’re more interconnected than ever before: Skype, Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and the list goes on, but with how many others do you actually pursue an emotional, deep connection with? Often times, we make friends on the basis that we have one thing in common, and that’s it. We go out, have fun, but do we really try to discover how their soul works, how their mind thinks? I can’t generalize, but most of the time, we don’t. It’s like we use others to fill a void, and we justify it by saying that they do the same. I’m not necessarily saying that there is anything wrong with this kind of relationship, but every once in a while, I do enjoy making a connection with someone else's soul. Being at peace with yourself will strip you from unnecessary elements, and will allow you to connect with others at a deeper level, or to at least try to (many times, the other person doesn’t cooperate.)

Still with me? If you’ve made it this far, kudos! We’re almost done. What are you to take from all of this: embrace solitude as a way to rediscover yourself, and as a starting point to cultivating deeper relationships with others. I’ll end with a quote from Gandhi: “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the 'atomic age' - as in being able to remake ourselves."