From one lost soul to another, it's not about learning how to be alone.
I have lost friends, lovers, and loved ones. I have transitioned cities, schools, and jobs. and all of those things changed me in more ways than one.
More recently, I think I've spent the last four months of my life living a meaningless purpose. Have you ever paused life, looked back and realized everything you did felt empty? I have listened to countless friends say to me, "I just feel lost," then hear myself reply, "Join the club." I have distanced my relationships and silenced my thoughts and opinions. I started to realize how disconnected from the world I truly was and how much I loathed the feeling. I thought I was focusing on me when really all I was doing is placing limitations on myself. I thought I was learning how to be alone, an individual, but learned quickly that being alone is something I never want to be. The word alone and the thought of being lonely even sounds depressing and undesirable. Really, I just wanted to explore myself so that eventually I could identify how to want things instead of need things. I learned that my goals weren't going to be accomplished by striving to be alone.
They say, "Not until you love yourself will you ever be able to love someone else." Which I think is true, but apply that quote to all aspects of life. Not just people. I think the real message here is you have to learn how to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with any other aspect of your life and you have to learn how to accomplish that happiness in the most productive ways, and it's not by being alone (trust me).
I've often found myself giving my friends advice by saying, "Just learn how to be alone. Once you do that you'll be fine. I've been successful thus far (forever single)." I said it while questioning it, and didn't really understand why I still felt so conflicted. I've been in an exhausting internal debate for months. Now, I know the question I've been trying to ask myself: if you feel lost, how do you find yourself?
As humans we were taught that when something or someone is lost it's usually found by something else or someone else, right? So how do you find yourself? I can tell you what the answer is not -- being alone. To seek individualism, you must not seclude yourself from opportunity. Ahhhh now we're getting somewhere.
Lets put this into perspective a little, shall we? You have checked every box (family, friends, religion, finances, community, career, etc.) and feel something is still missing from your life (you're lost). Even if you haven't checked all the boxes, but still feel that something is missing. Hint #1: It's probably not the box that's left unchecked. Hint #2: It's probably the box you forgot to even include. Figured it out yet, or do you need another hint? The answer is the box labeled: Yourself. The box you forgot to include. By listing all of those other things you thought you were including yourself, right? Because those are the things you desire most so why wouldn't they define yourself, right? Wrong. You've forgotten how to build yourself along the way of checking boxes. You forgot to write down the most important box while writing down all the others that seemed so important. While you thought you were being selfish you were really being selfless and selling yourself short in the process. Sure, you learned things along the way of checking boxes, but did you learn about yourself to your greatest ability?
What we've all been waiting for! Finding ourselves. Well, I can't attest to one thing -- it's not about driving your head down and bulldozing through life in order to accomplish the things on your list you wish to check off. It's about finding yourself as you trot through every aspect of life. It's about discovering yourself in the most fleeing ways possible and learning the world in its entirety so you can know yourself in its entirety. If you don't venture, how will you ever know what your heart, body or mind is capable of? If you seek to learn how to be alone and isolated you're only restricting the parts of you that could flourish.
We need to learn how to be individuals while saturating ourselves with all the ideas and opinions that create other individuals, right? Right. After all, we have a purpose and we each have our own unique footprint to leave behind when we go. The more you flood yourself with ideas and relationships the more you will grow to be different, because to be different you must know the differences. Starting to make sense?
If so, I think I have a little more advice before I go.
Go on trips you wouldn't normally take, ask questions you wouldn't normally ask, and pursue relationships that have before felt intimidating. Be confident in your goals and open minded to how you're going to accomplish them. Leave the rest to fate because always being in control is just another way of limiting your potential. We get nowhere by trying to figure out who we are by being alone and keeping ourselves to ourselves.
Next time someone tells you that you need to learn how to be alone, tell them they're wrong, you would rather learn how to be surrounded.
Completely surrounded.
