Learning to be alone without feeling lonely

Finding peace in my own company

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I’ve gone through periods when the word “alone” used to feel like too much for me to bear. There was the room in the house which was the quietest, and I used to go into a trance with its dim humming. I would pull up my phone and refresh and recheck if there was a new message, if I didn’t have one, there must be something wrong with me.

But gradually things began to alter.

It was a day when I was sitting there alone in a little café. No calls. No messages. Just me and a brew of coffee. Initially, I had some restlessness. Waited for any distractions to come and kept looking. But nothing happened.

Thus, I pushed my waiting aside.

I paid attention to the little things. I heard the cup clicking against the countertop as the server poured out the drink. The light, music in the background. The strip of light on the table. This was my first experience of not having to extricate myself from the moment. I remained.

I began to take to doing little things by myself. Walking without headphones. Eating without scrolling. Thinking without noise. Initially it was a bit weird, yet it was also relaxing.

I was now aware of something that was important. ALONE is not LONELY. Loneliness is a feeling of emptiness, of isolation, within. Aloneness, however, can be a place of meeting oneself.

So I’m not afraid of still times. I use them to gain clarity on my thinking. I have found that I don’t need to feel out of place when sitting with myself.

There I discovered something that I never could have dreamed of: peace.

[embed]Rajesh Poovathum Kadavil 🇮🇳 - Medium Read writing from Rajesh Poovathum Kadavil 🇮🇳 on Medium. Rajesh Poovathumkadavil is an Indian-born content writer…medium.com