Hari Om Namo Narayana!
“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. If you cannot be comfortable and happy in your own company, you cannot be happy with anyone else in the world.” -Osho
The ‘Lotus Mudra’ is a yogic ‘mudra’ that is said to help in building a deeper connection with the self and others. It can help cope better with being on your own as well as with people and understanding the importance of this duality.
Now, loneliness is a topic that has been written about so much that the biggest paradox is that great masterpieces that inspire millions are often created far away from society’s constructs.
Van Gough created masterpieces in the French countryside, even though his solitude was to the detriment of his mental health to a great extent.
‘Yogis’ would meditate deep in seclusion for long periods of time, to build a deeper wisdom about life, themselves and consciousness.
Nietzsche writes about it in his book “The higher man and the herd” from a perspective of achievement and doing your best work.
Aristotle compares a man’s comfort with loneliness to two extremes.
“Whoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.” he says.
You then look at accomplished athletes, fighters and martial artists who have had to be alone to work on their craft, work to master themselves.
On the other hand, Britain has a dedicated ministry for Loneliness.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/world/europe/uk-britain-loneliness.html
It was deliberated by the parliament that the perils of being lonely in a growing capitalist economy was weighing down on the mental health of its citizens and affecting national happiness and productivity.
We are living in times where people are further and further disconnected from each others’ realities while living under the same roof and working for the same company.
The movie “Joker” really paints an interesting picture about the struggle to balance your mental health while living alone trying to earn a decent living, working hard.
(A scene from Joaquim Phoenix’s “Joker” where the protagonist writes about his struggles in his diary)
Not only its impact on your mental health, being lonely exposes people living in big cities to many risks such as burglary and stalking.
Well, lot of people are more stoic mentally and loneliness doesn’t go about wrecking havoc to their minds, pulling out long unresolved issues from under the carpet.
For the people who have faced trauma, be it war, loss or failure, loneliness is tough to be comfortable with as it brings out a lot of issues that will perhaps take a lifetime to resolve and release fully.
And since the awareness how to tackle it is so thin, since its not taught at school and is a taboo, most people resort to substance abuse to ‘escape’ this feeling.
So what is the right answer is here?
The right answer for everyone should be that being alone should feel as natural as being surrounded by people in a marketplace.
That is when you can say for sure that your mind is working well and you are acting naturally.
If you don’t feel this way, no need to push yourself to the deep end at one go, but accept and slowly begin to increase your awareness and level of self dependence.
Yes there are many different types of personalities. Some are naturally introverted, some extroverted but human beings have evolved enough over time to be able to adjust to both extremes.
And let me tell you that as long as you feel balanced by other people and imbalanced on your own, you will continue to have imbalanced relationships.
No matter what your past was like, what experiences you’ve had. How good or bad your childhood was, to be able to push yourself to go beyond what feels comfortable, you will have to learn to be okay with solitude.
Solitude is where you work on your flaws.
Relationships enrich you and bring awareness into your life about yourself and your connection with the world.
Solitude however, is where you sit down with yourself and work on releasing hurt, questioning yourself, setting goals, personal boundaries and gaining a deeper awareness of what the experience of life is, really.
Many of us are just ‘stumbling’ through life, without a conscious understanding of why we are where we are and why we are headed where we are.
It’s as if, stopping and slowing down to go in wards will distort our experience of what truly is.
What if what really is, isn’t how you want it to be?
And what if you realise how far you’ve come in the wrong direction upon such a deliberation?
What then? What does it mean for your life as you know it?
These are some questions to ask yourself.
Chances are you can’t even nearly begin to truly dig deep into how you feel about them until you can sit with no one but yourself.
That’s how soldiers prepared themselves for a new day. Sharpening their sword, fixing their armor, tending to their injuries and fixing their gear.
That’s what loneliness does; it sharpens you, stitches your cuts shut, bandages your wounds and shows you where the healing needs to occur.
Of course, it means nothing if you’re not going out to interact again, in the world. However, wouldn’t a soldier fight better in the battlefield, with a better idea of his strengths, weaknesses and present condition of body, weapons and armor?
That’s how it is. Work done alone translates into meaningful interactions with the world.
Hope this helps.
Hari Om Namo Narayana!
