Solitude is Not the Worst Thing

At some point, you may find yourself alone.

When you take some time to yourself, you get to see what you actually think. You don’t need to worry that you will have a thought that could offend someone. You may find it in you to explore some thoughts more deeply, alone with yourself. Perhaps these are the thoughts that truly mattered to you, that you never found the time to reflect on.

If you train your mind to be peaceful and reasonable, you do not need to see yourself as an unwelcome enemy to be avoided. You can rejoice in the comfort of yourself as your own companion.

Like anything else, solitude is not good on its own and is not to be sought out in excess. But when it happens, understand that this is not the worst thing.

Take it as an opportunity to endure the silence, or the mental chatter if that is what you have, to actually see who you are when no one else is there to expect you to think or behave in one way or another.

Know that in their expectation, they often would guide you into being what they thought you were or should be. Yet you may find that you are not the person you felt the need to be when in their presence.

In solitude, you can seek clarity from everything, for you are not truly alone if you are watching shows, reading the thoughts and beliefs of others, or keeping yourself occupied with busy and needless work.

You are alone when you allow yourself to be aware that you are indeed alone.

When alone, you can take a moment to suspend all the concerns you had regarding other people in your life. You can let them melt away because for the moment they don’t matter.

In your aloneness, you may find that you are always busy, but for what? Most of the time, you were doing things for others, or your fear of how they would react if you didn’t do what was expected. Your mind may have been too preoccupied with others, and not enough with your true self.

Or you may find that you don’t understand this experience of being alone. You had always strayed from it, always been with other people, things, or ideas that didn’t allow you to actually be alone.

There is a good chance that if you aren’t ready to be alone, your mind will quickly recall the times you had with other people. It will aim to fill that feeling of being alone with experiences, even if just simulated in your mind. Then that is something to be aware of – that you do not seem to be ready to be alone. Or perhaps, you need further practice in being alone.

Even if you do allow yourself to remain just with yourself, fully alone, that foreign sense of being with yourself may concern or frighten you.

But why should it? You are not some threat – you are yourself.

And the lack of something to think or do or someone to share an experience with shouldn’t be the worst thing.

There is something worth learning if you would spend just a bit of time alone with yourself, and deal with the temporary pains that may come with it. You may find that you are not the person you thought you were or that being alone helped you to think more clearly. You may find that being with others had actually been a distraction from something that was truly important to you - something you had strayed away from in time.

Alone does not have to mean lonely. It can mean a path to true self-understanding.

When alone, you may find a hidden strength or ability within that you had never perceived before, as in the presence of others, you never needed to tap into it.

Needless to say, there is value in family, friendship, and communication, but it is also well worth learning how to be alone and seeing that there are fruits to be gained with this path as well.

We may perceive being alone as meaning that we have been abandoned, or that we are unworthy. But sometimes it is worth consciously choosing solitude, or embracing it. Yourself is nothing to be feared, after all.

Dance with the Present Moment and Experience Real Life

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life. ― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

In my life, as I try to grasp the present, I’ve found that many triggers jolt us away from the Now.

The triggers are omnipresent, forever invading. We don’t even notice them. Life can quickly become one trigger after another, dragging us away from what life was supposed to be.

Then, when real life happens, we tend to see life itself as a distraction. When really, we couldn’t be more wrong. The things we focused on were typically not real life at all. And the things that distracted us were real life, calling to us.

Real life was the rare human moment that someone wanted to share with us. But when it finally happened, we failed to realize it and shrugged it off.

It was the birds singing, but we were too busy to notice. It was the stranger on the street who was having a bad day and needed help. Real life was the sunrise, sunset, and the stars above. Or the face of your loved one that you hadn’t bothered to truly look at.

But when these things happened, we thought they were the distraction, not real life itself.

The distractions from real life were in the job that we do, where if we ceased to exist, someone else would fill the slot within 48 hours. It was the negative and judgmental words that we yell at ourselves in our minds. It was the worries about the stock market going up or down. It was the concern over the most negative news story of the day.

We thought we were living real life in these times, but we were not in the present moment here. Instead, we were upset about the past or worried about the future or focused on our made-up problems. Or perhaps, we were just distracted by nonsense.

As we become so-called mature and modern adults, we get to a point where whatever it is pulling us into the Now becomes the thing that we wish to avoid. The Now falls into the background. We somehow manage to escape the unescapable.

Adults have escaped from the present as if it were a disaster to be averted. But we weren’t meant to escape the Now. It’s like trying to outrun your shadow. Humans today are disjointed from their own shadow, living in a world of illusion when they become disconnected from the Now.

So why do we seek to escape it if this cannot be done?

The present may be too powerful for us to handle. It is a zone where anything could happen. The plans you had may work, or they may come crashing down. Your feelings may be validated or dismissed. A revolutionary idea may help you find success, cause you to have a massive failure or even both.

But rather than give in to the power of the present moment, we often wish to take power back for ourselves.

Our inflated egos make us want to hold on to the need to control, plan, achieve, and predict.

Some mysterious Now couldn’t possibly be at the reins of this life – no, we mortal and temporal humans feel that we are the ones in power. This is the illusion that we work on maintaining all our lives. Our lives become not life but rather the illusion of one.

I was once driving to work, and I saw a disheveled man with a chaotic, long beard. He was swaying his hands almost like a musical conductor. He seemed to be guiding traffic and buses to go where they were going. This man did not work for the city. He had a wild smile as if he was having the time of his life. Somehow, I understood what was happening. In this man’s mind, he was controlling the universe. He directed the traffic, the pedestrians, and perhaps even the animals. In his mind, he had orchestrated it all.

But of course, they were all doing what they wanted to do, and he was pretending to have made it happen that way. He felt the power and the control but had none.

Sometimes, that feels like the analogy for what humanity has become. We insist on maintaining control over that which is actually out of our hands. We are happy to take the credit when it works in our favor, but any time something goes wrong, it was out of our hands.

Yet, just maybe, things were always out of our hands. I can’t force my heart to beat, but it continues to happen. Until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it’s because it was never in my control, to begin with.

Maybe we are trying to control a universe that is actually out of our hands.

We find it difficult to let the Now be whatever it will be, to give us whatever it has to give, or to take from us whatever it wishes to take. And so, every day, we are resisting that present moment, as we have made it into the enemy.

We are not in the present moment because we have made it the enemy of our lives. We have succumbed to the triggers all around us.

Someone could spend a lifetime documenting these triggers that lead us away from the present, away from the Now.

When we have scheduled our lives away, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have plans and perceive nothing beyond them, we have resisted the present moment.

When we convince ourselves that we are failures and get stuck in self-pity, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have rejected a chance occurrence just because we did not expect it, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have labeled with language that which words cannot confine, we have resisted the present moment.

When we needed the security of knowing the outcomes of everything we may do, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have insisted on living by the patterns we have always lived by, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have denied our wild, spontaneous, and free side, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have failed to see the beauty in the beautiful, the sadness in the sad, and the wonder in the wonderful, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have gotten lost in thoughts rather than lost in the experience that is life, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have been convinced by false thoughts and ideas that do not stand up to reality, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have confused our temporary selves, emotions, and problems with being more important than the universe, we have resisted the present moment.

We do these things. I do them, you do them, and perhaps everyone I have ever known does them.

Seeing these triggers for what they are can take us even further away from the present, strangely enough. In seeing them, we start to notice them, label them, think about them, and interpret them, and all of this takes us further away from life.

But if we give ourselves to the Now, then there is nothing left to resist, and we become a part of that Now.

We don’t need to put much effort into this, as effort often works against the now. Going with the tides of now is effortless, but because we have resisted this for so long, it may appear to take effort to get there.

The Now is happening to us, whether or not we are ready to take it in and accept that. The power is more in the present than it is in us. We are predicting it, reacting to it, and explaining it, but are we experiencing it fully and living it? That is another matter.

Rather than grasping at the present, which cannot be grasped, it makes more sense to dance with it. We can focus on becoming aware and in sync with real life and strive to find a piece of that now. Even if we can’t have all of it, we can find some of it for ourselves.

The alternative is to live a life outside of the now. What kind of life is that?

Living longer is a focus for many, but it doesn’t mean much if we didn’t actually live those years. What percent of our lives took place in sync with the Now? That may be a more interesting metric to shoot for.

I’m not sure that being in the present is a skill or practice. It may be as simple as letting go of our ego, of our need to control and direct this thing called life. Rather than living the illusion of life, we can let it go and truly live.

Humans do have great power. But how great is that power when our lives are temporary, and every loved one will die? How great is it when everything built will fall, most of our predictions are wrong, and much of our lives occur in the imaginary world of ideas?

Our true power was in our ability to acknowledge the power of the present and to become one with it.

Join me in a never-ending dance with the present moment. That is the goal of this life if there ever was one.

If you are interested in learning more about the Present Moment, you may wish to read 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life.

It Runs Both Ways – What Flows Out Flows Back In

Today when you find yourself blaming someone else and absolving yourself fully of any responsibility, remember that it runs both ways.

When you get upset that a friend has not called you in a long time, remember that it works both ways. Perhaps you have not done your part in making this friendship work. Perhaps you have only thought of picking up the phone at times and not actually done it.

When you do your work halfheartedly and can’t wait until it’s time to go home all day, every day, then how can you be surprised to be met with this same halfhearted attitude everywhere you go? Perhaps you go to your boss, and he doesn’t seem to care about you or your life. You go to your kids, and they don’t care. You go to the store and ask for help finding something, but the person who works there isn’t concerned with your problems.

When you are lonely, and you want someone to be there for you and support you, ask yourself – what was the last time you were there for someone in need? Did someone want your help at some point, and you were not fully engaged in helping them? Perhaps you offered to help, but it was obvious you were not truly interested in being there.

When you are toxic and only see the negative in everything around you, pointing out the flaws and problems in all that you see constantly, how can you be surprised if the people around you become bitter and only see the negative in you? How can you be surprised when all they want to do is avoid you?

When you walk in the streets, distracted by your phone, and a vehicle almost hits you because the driver was distracted, how can you be upset by this? Sure, the driver of a vehicle is responsible for driving safely and paying attention. But isn’t someone who is walking around vehicles also responsible for walking safely and keeping his distance from vehicles?

When you are mad that all the people around you are selfish and only looking out for themselves, ask yourself – what have you done that was motivated by truly helping someone else, and not just to benefit yourself? And for whatever excuses you come up with, understand that the people around you who have acted selfishly probably have the same reasons.

When you expect or ask something from your subordinates, and you don’t live up to that standard yourself, you cannot be surprised when they lose respect for you. If you are going to ask the people below you to do something (e.g., to arrive on time), you should meet the same standard or better for yourself.

When you focus on punishing all the people around you for minor mistakes and wrongs, what else can we expect than them wanting us to be punished equally any time we would commit a minor mistake? You may argue – “No, this is different. I have a good reason.” But did you listen when other people had their reasons?

When you want to control someone else’s way of life because you don’t think they are smart enough or capable enough, how can you be surprised when someone who views himself as superior to you wants to do the same to you?

Whether poison or love, anything that flows out of you ultimately flows back in.