Throughout my twenties, I surrounded myself with random acquaintances because I was afraid of being alone.
Now, in my thirties, I can’t imagine not spending the majority of my time alone.
Back then, I associated the act of looking around my apartment and not seeing anyone else with being unlovable, inadequate, or somehow off track.
I would fall into mental loops when alone, usually characterized by a sense of disorientation about who I was or what I was supposed to be doing with that space and silence.
I chose to feel it as loneliness. That turned to pain. And my sustained pain morphed into a chronic but vague yearning I labeled as depression.
A few experiences over the years that followed recalibrated my inner compass.
I was given new lenses through which I could choose to leverage time in quiet isolation. I just couldn’t see the gradient that contained the gift within the context of my old framework. Back then, I didn’t have the contrast to fully appreciate it.
It’s funny. Now, my solitude is my drug.
Once you get over the hump, once you can transmute the dense energy of loneliness into the ecstasy of uninterrupted solitude, your time spent in isolation goes from grim to glorious.
I only realized it in hindsight, but nearly all of the most transformative moments of my life have occurred when I was alone.
People just assume you need someone else there to cause or witness or participate in things in order to enjoy them. You absolutely do not.
The key to embracing solitude is to release the assumption that someone else has to be present in order for meaning to be made.
Then you just need to find activities that put you in flow state.
I’m not antisocial. And I’m not even saying solitude is better than time with others. They’re different experiences that catalyze different kinds of expansion.
In solitude, you can hear the depths of your own truth in a way you just can’t do in the presence of people.
But with others serving as mirrors, you get feedback. You can then take that data into your meditative practice and use it for self analysis.
Being alone has a negative connotation. Most people default into negative feelings when they’re confronted with isolation. But being by yourself is not bad – it’s neutral, just as being with others is also neutral.
If both states-of-being are fundamentally neutral, why add the extra layer of complication by introducing a “foreign” agent into my life?
I’m extremely protective of my space. In order for me to let anyone in – a male friend or female companion – the benefit of their presence must outweigh the yield I could attain by using that space by myself. Not very many people pass that litmus test.
Ultimately, you do need both companionship and contemplative isolation to live most optimally.
Sustained seclusion is counter-productive. You will become disillusioned and disconnected from the world. But drowning yourself in the wrong company is just as destructive.
What if you allowed yourself to feel free, not afraid, when alone? What if you chose to make your solitude sacred instead of scary?
Solitude is our natural state. It’s how we came into and how we’ll leave this world. And it’s where all of our deepest work will be done.
I’ve found that the thing we’re most afraid of, like being alone, usually contains some hidden gem that we aren’t aware of until we’re pushed to the brink. Only then do we discover some deeper truth that often causes us to seek that which we imagined would annihilate us all along.
For me, that thing was loneliness. It was only when pushed to my limits that I found the quiet euphoria of solitude on the other side.