LONELINESS

 

Photo by Sam Moghadam on Unsplash

How do we bridge the gap?

Man is a social being. Being an island may sound lucrative to an introvert you would think, but it is not true. Take it from me because I am that introvert. I enjoy being alone for long periods and am happy with just a few solid connections and yet, loneliness has hit me hard and not just once!

Being alone is one thing and loneliness is another.

Every single one of us, no matter who we are, how connected we are, how popular we are, however large our family is or our friend circle is, has felt this doom of loneliness- of being disconnected. For some like me, feeling like a misfit and feeling lonely, even more so, when the number of people around increase, can be confusing. The extroverts feel like exploding without company.

Some people have never been alone for a long period of time. If not physically, they at least need connection through phone calls, texts or some means. In fast paced urban areas, there is no time for connection and increasingly people try to bridge that gnawing loneliness or emptiness with the innumerable numbing devices.

Addictions from food to doom scrolling, to binge watching Netflix, to substances of any kind are all crazy efforts to numb that feeling of loneliness- of having to face yourself without an audience, without some prop that defines us. Some do it positively too, having a routine, a healthy one which gives you no time to dwell on lonely thoughts, right till you hit the sack, exhausted.

What none of us want to accept or address, is the fact that, at some point in our life and especially as we grow older, we will have to spend time alone. We may not be physically fit to keep running or staying busy till nightfall. We will have no one to take care of and there might be no one to take care of us. We may live on, well after retirement and our ability to make friends might dwindle. We may have to relocate and not see anyone, we once knew. The scenarios are endless.

Believe me, this blog is not to make you feel lonely and dead before time, it is to empower you with a solution. Not just you, me as well. When you teach what you think you know, you learn it better.

The solution is just one and it is simple and doable. It would feel like a Herculean task because it involves unlearning (which is why this blogging platform of mine was created) and relearning and that too, with a lot of patience, dealing with difficult emotions which threaten to break us down. Our conscious mind will resist in so many ways and we will be desperate to listen to it. Don’t.

The solution is to know yourself. Connect with the real you. When you begin skeptically, you think you know yourself already. Then, you will start panicking after a bit, because you will begin to realise that you do not know who the real you is! It has been buried under millions of layers of “who you should be.” You will feel so lost, almost depressed because your memory fails you and when you ask people close to you, they describe you so unsatisfactorily that you feel positively lost and the feeling of terror it brings, is not fun. The key is self-acceptance. No glossing over the parts of you, you don’t like because they are “bad” by societal standards. Accept the good, the bad and the ugly. That is after all, the recipe of your uniqueness.

Most of us will quit here and go back to numbing. Don’t. This is the healing everyone talks about.

Keep doing this in bits and pieces. Do not give up on yourself. This is the only long-term investment you need, along with your physical health. In fact, this will aid your physical wellbeing. Begin this process, say once a month. Be consistent. Don’t let the mind say “this is boring, I know myself” and then promptly pick up your phone or your remote control.

Once you start establishing a connect with yourself, spend time with yourself doing nothing. Just sitting. Start with 10 minutes. Keep increasing the time. Once you are sufficiently comfortable, take yourself out into a familiar setting. Do not fidget with the phone. Just you with you. No music, no diversions. Just giving yourself all the attention you need. And no nit-picking at yourself.

If you are consistent, you can take yourself out on a holiday. Maybe, you already go on solo trips and you are thinking what’s such a big deal about this? Do you find ways to keep yourself engaged so that you do not feel awkward or are you at peace with your company? If you have been doing this and are really comfortable being on your own without numbing, you are acing it. The day you master this art of connecting with yourself, you are ready for the final step.

The final step is to see yourself as an extension of the Universe. This will either lead you to nirvana, enlightenment or just to a life in which you will never feel lonely again.