Being alone is not always lonely.
Alone together
The word alone looks and acts strange. Humans can be all by themselves among many others. It’s a team sport. The act of being a lone person, meaning one, is a distinction that creates a different feeling. Outside of being born as a multiple, we start out pretty much alone. There are designated adults assigned to care for us, but it is a difficult job, and they are largely untrained. Baby humans spend lots of sleeping time alone with their own thoughts and no way to share them outside of screaming. Eventually there is some smiling and sounds that serve as rudimentary speech, but mostly crying. Life must seem difficult when you spend so much time in tears.
Lonely Alone
Another aspect of being a lone human is the possibility of feeling like you are alone. This doesn’t happen all of the time. It is more likely to come up when questions are in more abundance than answers. It is not always a negative. Like a baby, stuff gets figured out. Although it takes a little while to try out different methods, this is the actual baby as scientist mode. This is a great viewpoint to use as an adult when attempting to be a lone human that is not alone. When acting as a lone human, there are fewer connections. Sometimes, that lightens the load.
Remotely Alone
Many humans learned through a crash course how to be alone when they had to work remotely. That’s when the baking started because learning how to bake a loaf of bread is an actual skill that demonstrates mastery. Working remotely didn’t have a recipe so the participants had to follow their own theory on how to work alone. Some were lonely and some were not. No requirement was included in their original job description for either. But learning how to be alone can prevent the sister issue of being lonely. It is possible that of the many lessons learned in the last few years, this one will be the most valuable. There is strength in the absence of numbers.
Lonely Alone
Loneliness can hurt. It has varying degrees of pain and affect. In theory, when a human being doesn’t want to be alone, that can produce loneliness. There is no cut and dried situation. But when tears appear without cause, look around to see if there is anyone there to help wipe them away. If you have to grab your own tissue, that feels lonely. The good part about being lonely alone is that it can make a human yearn enough for a change. When we don’t have motivation, nothing changes. Even a negative situation can develop a positive outcome. That seems counter-intuitive until you look for occurrences in your life. Go all of the way back to babyhood. You didn’t stay alone. You sought out other humans for company. You smiled to get noticed. You started making words that made sense. You joined the other humans around you. You cut down on the lonely moments. You started to feel understood. Look around right now. If someone is nearby, send them a sly smile. They may feel alone.
Have you noticed that it’s okay to be alone but not lonely? What do you like doing alone? Are you okay with being a lonely human?
