How important is it to know how to be alone?
In another article, I spoke about how important it is to have people who support us - people we can count on, open up to, laugh with, share silences and downfalls. Human beings are, by nature, social animals. But today I want to talk about the other side: what do we do when we’re alone? Do we know how to be with ourselves? There’s a huge difference between being alone and feeling lonely . One is circumstantial - I can be alone on a Sunday afternoon and be perfectly fine with it. The other is more painful - I can be surrounded by people and still feel invisible. But for some reason, we’ve learned to associate “being alone” with failure, with emptiness, as if silence were the enemy and constant company the definition of a fulfilled life. And it’s not. Being alone is uncomfortable because it forces us to face what’s going on inside. And the truth is, a lot of people are afraid to do that. Afraid to hear themselves. Afraid of what they might discover. Afraid they wo...
