Being Alone and Lonely


It's a quiet Saturday morning and the emptiness of the house surrounds me like a shroud.  It's as easy to get maudlin and melancholy as to get motivated but I'm going to go with the latter.  Being alone is something to appreciate.  Certainly for someone with my strong independent streak it's absolutely desirable to have alone time.  How I suddenly came to have so much of it is irrelevant.  Life has a way of forcing you into these situations where you have to cope with that which you did not expect.  It's happened here recently and there is nothing to be done but carry on.

Today the sun shines and the air has a hint of potential.  Spring potential. It's one of those shiny days that teases you.  Since it's the first day of February you know spring is a long way off, but the taste of it is on your tongue when you go out into the mild air.  It tempts you into longing and away from sitting in the present which is the only place you can truly sit.

It's a domestic day today with laundry and cleaning and dusting at the forefront. It's also an administrative day as I write some content for a website and create ad copy for a magazine.

It's a writing day but only in a research sense as I once again immerse myself in the happenings of Change Islands' life eighty years ago.

Lately I've been longing for the days of poetry. When inspiration and the time to follow up on it with words lived side by side. Perhaps these upcoming days alone will create those opportunities again.  Perhaps that's the very reason for them?

The key to being alone and doing it well is to really like the person you're alone with.  I enjoy my own company and never really do feel lonely.  Lonely is a desperate place and I've always observed that the decisions people make out of loneliness are the ones that often lead them down the road to the most miserable times of their lives.  They settle for less than they deserve rather than learn the satisfaction of being alone and thriving there.  Opportunity frequents the quiet but people, desperate not to be alone, can't wait for the sound of it.

With billions of people in the world no one need ever be lonesome however when finding themselves in that place it might be better, instead of falling into the melancholy of it, to move towards the motivation part of it.  Go give someone a helping hand, bake them a bread, knit them something, reach out and make their lives a bit fuller. After all they may be a tad lonely also.

For someone as social as me one might think being alone would be a hardship.  It isn't.  Instead I sit down and write and then get up and do.

A full life is one of balance and the quiet times are when I create.  In the same way your strength builds not during the workout but during the rest period of a fitness program, such is how your emotional and mental strength builds in the quiet times.

And so I am alone.  Alone should not be your master, it should be your servant.  I will not serve the silence, it shall serve me.  Enjoy your day.

Carolyn

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