Being Alone :)

Have you ever noticed that only when you are surrounded by people do you actually feel truly alone.  I've noticed this a lot lately.  That you never feel alone when you are sitting by yourself alone, but when your with a bunch of couples with no hand to hold.  We as people are fine being by ourselves but I think there is a large difference between being alone and being lonely.  I enjoy being alone at times, I think everyone does.  Having time to yourself to be alone and think to yourself.  But people get lonely when they aren’t in a relationship or they don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend.  My best friend T and I always talk of the boys that we wish we could have and how we wished we were in relationships.  But I don’t think it is because we are alone.  We just want someone, someone to love us and care for us.  Isn’t that what everyone wants?  Doesn’t everyone want someone to love?  And if they don’t have that they think they are alone.  The problem with this revelation I’ve had is that I don’t understand it and fully believe it at the same time.   I don’t understand why we as humans always feel like we need to have someone loving us, but then again I feel like I do need it.  It’s a viscous circle I feel we all find ourselves in.  But I was talking about the book Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and I remembered a quote I read from it.

 "When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings." 

Now personally I didn’t really enjoy that book as much as other people did.  But if you haven't read it you can pretty much figure it out based on that quote,  which I do love.  I think it had so much merit and strength behind it.  We do need to learn how to be alone.  How to be by ourselves.  The rest of the book tells of a woman who travels around the world doing things and learning about the world, doing it only for herself and her experience.  This last year has been eye opening and I’ve learned a lot about myself, things I don’t think I would’ve have learned if I wasn’t alone.  There is this saying that I always say, and tell people, “Stop searching for love, for you will not find it.  But when you stop looking and begin to do things that make you happy and that you love, well that’s when love will find you.  Why do we go searching for love?  Why are we so against being alone?  Being alone is where we learn more about ourselves, where we learn how to love.  So I bet you can guess my advice, It’s not that hard to figure out.  Be alone.  Or just not feel the need to always be with someone, whether it be a gentleman or lady caller, or even a bunch of friends.  Don’t think I’m suggesting we all should be recluses or nuns never falling in love.  But I think that being alone has a bad connotation and that there really isn’t anything wrong with it.  I think that before we can fall in love, or even just be in a relationship we have to know ourselves and learn about ourselves.  Something I don't believe we can do with another person.  So I guess what I'm saying is that if you are single, don't go trying to change that so hard.  And if your not, well give yourself a night away from your significant other.  Spend sometime with yourself learning and figuring out what you love and who you are.  If you really think about it you can't really love others if you don't love yourself and know who you are.  So go figure it out....by yourself. :) 

this is a picture from the Eat Pray Love movie...and it has nuns in it:)...i love nuns :) hehehe Love Syd :)