Remember to have faith in ourselves and glance back and see how much you have grown. Reflection is essential in growing and becoming stronger within in your own power.
Understanding that victimization is not the answer; everything that is happening, is all part of the path that we must be on in order to grow.
After having a deep conversation with a friend, I am so thankful that he has gratefully succumbed to this path of understanding.
There is a fundamental human need for companionship, for a sympathetic ear, for reassurance, for hearing our feelings and sentiments echoed back, for touching and being touched.
Being alone is sensory deprivation, slow torture, and our souls cry out for a kindred spirit, for the comfort that only a friend can give, for someone who can fill the emptiness, who can share the isolated moments of our existence.
Loneliness weakens the spirit. It consumes our strength and dims our inner flame and power. It tempts us to wallow in self pity, to descend into a kind of gloomy rapture, depressed and paralyzed, yet at the same time glorifying in our misery, suffering proudly in our own private hell.
For all that, loneliness is a state of mind, a sickness of the soul rather than an external condition, and it is entirely within our power to fight it, and perhaps work towards healing it.
Resisting loneliness is more than a matter of “keeping busy” -immersing yourself in so many activities that you have no time to reflect on your sad state. It involves following your interests, improving your skills, developing yourself as a multifaceted individual. It means going out and meeting people, making contacts, learning to survive in a social context; get out of your comfort zone! It means living your dream. Not at some future time when you might be finally in a relationship, but here and now!
Aloneness is a riddle we must solve in order to be worthy of the compassion of others, and therein lies the central paradox of being alone. –That it can either ennoble, or degrade.
The essential difference between aloneness and loneliness is the anguish, the acute hunger for the contact that the lonely suffer.
Could we but consider solitude a necessary journey of discovery, a crisis that may ultimately purify and strengthen us, and then we would emerge from this dark night of soul uplifted and exalted, more fully realized and engaged as a person. Once comfortable in our own company, reconciled to the austere beauty of silence, or privacy of total self-sufficiency, only then can we travel onward and explore the horizons of interaction, of exchange, or binding with our fellow humans.
