Are you ok with being alone or are you perpetually lonely?

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." ~Orson Welles

There is so much to agree with and disagree with in that quote. See while we are ultimately alone in everything we do, there are 7 billion of us now so I’m not sure we were ever meant to be alone. Still, I find a tremendous amount of strength in learning how to be alone without being lonely.

A few decades of my life have been about trying to glue myself to the hip of one other person. It’s always been tough for me to sleep by myself, go walking alone or stay home on a Saturday night without a social buddy. My issue comes maybe from losing my father at a really young age but more so, I am an artist which means I am more about emotions than anything else so I thrive on the emotions of others. But, being an artist means I like my alone time too. But that is only more recently. For years, I really liked creating with and for other people. Now I am at a point where I don’t mind being alone with my art and I like doing it for me. I figured out what happened though; I exchanged some of my dialogue from actual people and replaced it with dialogue between the characters I write about in my creative writings. This has been a big break-through for me. The only other time I felt ok about being alone with imaginary people and creatures was when I was under the age of 10!

Orson was right when he said we can create the illusion we are not alone through love and friendship. It’s very cool and I don’t take anything from that but he’s also right when he said we are born alone, live alone and die alone. It used to be super depressing to hear it said like that. You feel like you want to give up. But instead of that portion of the quote being some kind of mantra to live by, I just grab a lesson from it and move on. The lesson is that if we can learn simply how to be by ourselves, we will ultimately have a strong presence that will not become needy when it comes to others. Through learning to be by ourselves and alone with ourselves, we could possibly develop a muscle which enables us to give to others and not be such a taker of life.

I say this because overall, I believe our reason for being with others is to not suck their soul dry of its content, but to have something to offer. If we are sure our own character has the ability to do this, we may in fact become better at finding the right person who we can share our lives with. Think of how many people gravitate towards people who are simply not good for them! I think if I really dig myself first as an individual, I could very well recognize who is the best person to pair up with! Simply put; if you like yourself and your individuality, you’ll pick someone who matches that. If you are needy and dependent, you most likely will pick someone too dominating for you.

The most common advice you may hear after a bad break-up may be, "spend some time by yourself before moving on". Nobody likes to hear it. If you are used to having someone around no matter how crappy they are in your life, you’ll settle for something that does not even come close to being good for you.

There are so many people in this life who have not partnered up with someone and found a great purpose. I think learning to love ourselves should be a priority. That way, if you end up being alone, you’ll be ok. If you end up partnering up, you both can share your spirit instead of stealing each other’s.

Are you ok with being alone or are you perpetually lonely?

Much love on ya!

Karen :)

(quote at the top…lol)