Many find it difficult to comprehend how some love solitude. How we relish in a calm and quiet environment, reading and learning, puttering and working on projects. They question we can endure it, being alone, thinking it must be awful and we must all be secretly lonely. Ha! Quite contraire – most of the time.
And ‘me’ is one of the ‘we.’ Solitude is heaven on earth. It is where peace is found. It is where learning, creativity, and productivity take place. It is where we can breathe, recharge from all of the noise and mess of everyday living. It’s not because we don’t like people – some of us love them! But people can be selfish, cruel, and plain old ugly. They can use and abuse others, befriend then ghost, love then hurt. Authenticity and sincerity is rare. Joy isn’t always found in others and for many introverts, joy is found in being alone. People can be emotionally draining, exhausting, and some offer way too much unnecessary drama and chaos. No, thank you.
Yet as wonderful as solitude can be, one must be very self-aware to recognize when solitude turns into isolation. When socializing with others is necessary, even when we may mentally resist at first, caught up in our thoughts and ‘need’ to navigate our way through difficult emotions on our own before facing the world again.
This is when solitude risks being detrimental to one’s overall well-being. I recognized this in myself yesterday. There is much going on in my life, externally, that I have zero control over. There are if’s or when’s. There are ‘should have’s and ‘could have’s.’ There are realizations and rationalizations, reflections and reasons. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and there are countless phases and chapters in life. Today is – today. It’s not permanent. Our past doesn’t define us unless we choose not to learn from missteps. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Worry only robs us of the present – easier said than done.
Yet when we get so caught up in our heads, no matter how realistically optimistic we are, it can be unhealthy. I was there. I did it. I had one negative experience that caught me totally off guard, assaulted me to the core, and ruined the rest of my day – because I let it. It was an accumulative reaction, a domino effect of negative interactions. Despite the fact that I recognized this to be a direct result of what transpired for this person just before our interaction, I took it personally and I reacted (thank you menopause!) in a human way – then questioned my reaction, and beat myself up over it. I just couldn’t let it go and I spiraled downward into a terribly dark place. That and my fur-child was also out of whack, out of character, all day (Mercury retrograde, just saying). Every last nerve was ignited and my patience was – none.
God wasn’t listening. My blessed be was blessed none. And optimism eluded me.
So I accepted, and allowed, it. I was angry, hurt, upset, fearful, and sad. Everything out of my control that I’d accepted and come to terms with overwhelmed me – serenity, gone! No courage, no wisdom. Gone.
Reality was another day closer and as mentally prepared as I thought I was, I wasn’t. I was filled with self-pity and self-loathing. Done with stepping into the other person’s shoes to understand a*&hole behavior. And genuinely fearful of the future. I had no positive or optimistic left. I didn’t want to be happy. I simply wanted to crawl into bed and be miserable – so I did, and I was. I had grown helpless and irrational, a victim rather than a victor.
This morning, daylight broke then the sun rose in the sky. How terrible to wake-up to strikes in the Middle East, such discord around the globe, and a world in chaos. Yet there was light, and hope. My dog greeted me and my feet hit the floor. Ah, another day on the right side of the grass – so what could be wrong?! Despite any challenges and obstacles, what couldn’t be faced and overcome?
Today I pushed through myself to visit with a dear friend of our family. I knew how much this visit would mean to him, and to us, when all was said and done – and most often miracles aren’t grandiose events, yet friends and family who truly become the angels who walk among us – and they don’t even know it! They come to the rescue – saving us from ourselves. Freeing us from isolation, and lessening the load we carry.
Suddenly things don’t seem so bad. We again see solutions, rather than problems – opportunities, rather than endings. How powerful human connection can be.
Solitude is beautiful, but isolation is dangerous. Know the difference.
