Today's
Meditation:
How
I love solitude. How I used to hate solitude.
When I was younger, solitude used to mean isolation and
loneliness. Now that I've made friends with
solitude, it now means something different. It means
being able to focus on creative endeavors. It means
enjoying peace and quiet. It means being able to
breathe easily and not feel any pressure to meet the needs
of anybody else.
I
still love being around people and sharing things and time
with them. I still love good conversations and I
love hearing other people's stories and ideas. But I
also love being alone and partaking in the activities that
I feel drawn to. When I'm alone, I can write without
feeling that I'm ignoring someone else. When I'm
alone, I can choose any music to listen to without having
to make sure that someone else likes it, too.
There's now a freedom in being alone for me, rather than a
misery.
It
seems a bit contradictory to me to enjoy being alone so
much, but I find that my alone time is about the most
important in my life. I wouldn't give up my time
with my wife or my step-kids or my friends or my
co-workers for anything--but I also wouldn't give up the
time I have to be alone with my thoughts (which are much
healthier now) and my creative energy and my need to
recover, restore, recuperate.
How
we feel about being alone depends upon how we look at
being alone. If we see it as healthy and necessary,
it will be a healthy part of our lives. If we see it
as painful and dreadful, guess what? We'll be
miserable during the time we spend alone.
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