Solitude

I’m alone right now and considering this overwhelming intermingling sense of emptiness and solitude. It is peaceful of course, but surprisingly chaotic. Why? Being alone promotes a contemplative experience which can be a very risky road to go down – everyone knows that. If it is so risky, and we KNOW it to be so, then why can we not resist wandering the stretching notions that pile in our minds one after the next? Maybe this is why, as a general rule, we don’t like to be alone. Everyone needs a bit of “me time” but only to a point.



It is interesting how being in a relationship can change the face of being alone; and even the vocabulary we use to describe it. Before a relationship maybe we are “alone”, or even sometimes a bit “lonely”. Then we get into a relationship and have to spend a night alone and we feel “isolated”, but not alone, not lonely. We grow so accustomed to the presence of one person that without them we become anxious, unsure of what to do next. Of course we were not always in that relationship and we managed to carry on quite easily before, so why does that change? Perhaps the comfort of the other stems from their ability to react to us. We have a thought (strange, boring, innovative…any kind) and we just spit it out to our “other”. If they are not there, however, we are forced to mull it over, and over, and over. Thoughts are plaguing in that way. They are supportive in that we always know another thought it around the corner, but in that same vein they are exhausting; it’s like they chase us in a game of tag where there is no base. We can meditate, which may get us close shutting up those thoughts but something is always there; for me anyway. In the quiet of solitude all those pesky thoughts seem to show their face leaving us to wonder if our drive to spend time with others and build relationships fueled by a more selfish desire to quiet our own thoughts?