While my first semester of college was a vibrant, amazing period of time that I wouldn’t trade for anything, naturally it came with its ups and downs. The most prevalent set of circumstances I’ve faced in the past months is while I’ve met plenty of new people through the college experience, I still found myself lonely and constantly craving more and more out of my social life. This seemed bizarre to me considering all I was doing to make sure I did not feel this way: frequently visiting friends and trying to set up get-togethers with them, going to events-- the list goes on. It really made me feel like I was stuck in a continuous mood of dissatisfaction with the quality of my social life, and would be for a long amount of time in the future. I hated to admit it, but I was sort of looking forward to going back home for Christmas; I was in desperate need of a break from this depressed feeling that was consuming me regarding my social well-being. On Christmas Day, I received a message from my friend to whom I’ve discussed some of my concerns. The message was an excerpt from a book called Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur that my friend said reminded her of me. It said, “loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself” (Kaur 153). While I thanked her for the advice, I was very skeptical of this assessment. I consider myself to be painfully self-aware, and the idea of me being not in touch of with myself seemed absurd.

However, as the break continued, this phrase continued to ring more and more true to my situation. Because all my friends weren’t residing in an incredibly close radius to me like in college, I was much less pressured to go out and be social every minute of the day. Thus, I spent a vast majority of my break sitting in my room and chilling out. While this seems unproductive, this was exactly what I needed after months of spending time with other people. Not only did this break from school give me time to relax from the social pressures of college, but it helped me to realize that I need time to myself just as much as I need time with other people. It gives me an opportunity to put myself first, spend time thinking about my internal problems, and work on solving them. It was a fantastic revelation that I plan to apply to my college life as I go into my upcoming semester.

While I was taking a break from it all, I watched this interesting documentary called Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. It's about two men that learn that after spending their life consuming more and more material items to fill a gaping void in their life, they decide to minimize their lives' possessions to the basics, and become so much happier. Ironically, what they thought would bring them happiness ended up bringing them farther and farther from it; no matter how much stuff they bought, it was never enough to achieve bliss. It turns out that the very opposite led them to look past their false mask of happiness through consumption and to better understand what made them happy.

I see a similar thing happening to me. I spent this whole semester thinking what would make me happy is being with friends; the more time I would spend doing fun things with fun people, the more happy I would be. I could not have been more wrong. While it helps to be around fun people and do fun things, this alone to an excessive degree will not grant one eternal happiness. Ironically, what actually brings one to satisfaction with their own life is satisfaction with oneself, not with other people. This break and the alone time it brought me allowed me to understand that I can’t try to mask my happiness with other people; I have to come to a conclusion of my problems with myself for that.

The one person who knows what you want is you. It should be a priority of all to make time with oneself before trying to seek answers to their problems in other people.