Tag Archives: alone

Alone, not Lonely

I’m fortunate to live a life surrounded by people I love and who love me. I don’t take this for granted, it truly is a blessing and a gift. I feel lucky to have this, and I know not everyone does.

I also feel fortunate that I have always enjoyed alone time. To me, moments of solitude are precious as well. As a kid, I spent a fair bit of time on my own. I shared this yesterday,

“I grew up on a dead end street, and there were no kids my age nearby. This was in Barbados, and my grandparents owned a motel (actually rental apartments) on our street. I had a few friends that visited yearly but a lot of summer days I spent either playing with my younger sister or an older cousin when he’d put up with me. Or, I played on my own. I had quite an amazing imagination and could entertain myself for hours.”

I was often alone and never felt lonely.

My grandparent’s house was across the street and I probably spent more waking hours in that house than in my own. It was like their house was the main house and ours was our sleeping quarters. I remember driving my grandmother crazy. I’d go to her dining room table on one end of her huge kitchen, a massive table that could easily seat 12, and often did for dinner, and I’d pace around it.

Flat footed, I’d walk circles around it, my feet slapping against the tiles. Twenty, thirty, fifty times I’d circle the large table in a meditative state of imagination. Like an autistic child stimming, I’d find pleasure in the repetition of motion and sound as I circled the table. Externally I was in a monotonous or boring behavioural loop. Internally I was in an imaginative world far removed from my stimming body.

Alone, not lonely. By myself and fully enthralled, even entertained. Until my grandmother interjected. “Boy, what’s the matter with you?”

She wasn’t being mean, she was concerned. I’m sure she was thinking, ‘What’s my grandkid doing, stuck in an en endless loop, mindlessly circling my table?’

“Stop that boy, why don’t you go outside and play?”

“I’m fine.”

“Go play outside. It’s nice out.’

So, I’d go outside and find somewhere else to be comfortably alone. But I’d often find my way back to circle the big table. A place of comfort, shaded from the hot sun, and feeling the cool kitchen tiles with my bare feet.

I may not take being surrounded by family and friends for granted, but I have always known that solitude is comfortable for me. Nowadays I tend to fill my alone time with audio books and podcasts. This is partly because I have tinnitus and quiet time is no longer quiet, it is interrupted by a continuous tone in my ears. So, I fill the quiet with external input. It’s also because I love to learn and find joy in learning on my own time.

So now I have less true ‘empty’ time compared to when I was a kid. I’ve come to realize that my writing time is my quiet time. This is my time of solitude, just me and my thoughts. Me in silence, alone every morning. Thinking. Writing. Absorbed in my own words, my own world. Alone. At peace, and very comfortable. I love that I never feel lonely when I’m by myself. This, like being surrounded by loved ones, is a blessing and a gift, and I cherish it.

Alone time

I just had a few days with a lot of alone time. I enjoyed it, but was really not focussed on anything I hoped to do. It reminded me of how much I rely on my habits and routines to keep me ‘in check’. I don’t necessarily use free time well, I get distracted and I’m easily entertained.

I never get lonely, and can spend time on my own without being bored or needing company… but I also need goals and tasks or I can just get lost in my own world. A perfect example is today I learned about Ed Witten, and then I spent almost two hours watching videos, most of which explained things beyond my full comprehension, but I was both engaged and lost… and again I was fully entertained.

It’s the power of being an introvert… even when I’m on my own, I never feel alone.

A quiet mind

While we don’t sit in silence very often (yesterday’s post and one from 2022), we also don’t sit with a quiet mind. Our ‘To Do’ list, obligations, and plans fill our mind with things in the future rather than the present.

The idea of stillness eludes us even when it’s quiet. The notion that we are fully present escapes us. A happy experience? Let’s take a photo to remember it. A pretty sky? Let’s take a video. A beautiful walk? Let’s plan our next meal. We seldom stay in the moment.

Maybe it’s just me and my monkey brain. My brain that tries to meditate and spends its time wandering. I want to wonder but I wander. I want to be quiet and still but I fidget internally as well as externally.

I want the gift, the present, of being present. I seek the now and not the future… Not the thoughts of what’s next, what I must still do, and what I should or should not say to someone not currently with me. Imagining future conversations, or worse, past conversations and how they could have been better.

A quiet mind is not an empty mind, it’s a mind focused and aware of the now. It is not in the past or the future, it is in the presence of the present. I will meditate after writing this. Meditation must come after writing or I’m even less present as I think of what I’m going to write. Even then, my mind will drift, I will accept it and understand that refocusing is part of the process, it actually is the process. But I long for the quiet, the stillness, the moments where I’m fully present.

Perhaps it’s that very longing that prevents me from getting there. The desire to be more present is a desire and want of something not in the the present and thus something I can not seek without being less present. It’s the paradox of letting go: the more you try to let go, the more you are holding on to something… the less still your mind is.

Sitting in silence

We almost never sit in silence anymore. Music, podcasts, tv, social media, and even humming or singing to ourselves, we fill the silent void.

There is no room for boredom, no space for quiet contemplation, no moments of solitude. Only noise, distractions, and attention to external inputs. What can we fill this quiet space with? What can we pay attention to? And what else now?

Sit in silence for a while. Sit with your own thoughts. Let them linger, let them settle. Let them get past the sensation that you should be doing something, anything but this. And breathe.

Sit in silence for a while.

Sitting in silence

This afternoon I was emptying the dryer and folding my clothes in silence. This would normally not be anything worth noting but it occurred to me that I really don’t sit in silence much anymore. Cutting the grass, doing the dishes, cooking, doing the laundry, I almost always do these and other chores while listening to a book or a podcast. I fill the quiet with voices coming from my phone/headphones.

Folding my laundry today made me realize that I miss the quiet of thinking without a distraction. Just about the only other time I do this is while writing, and maybe that’s why this thought came to me, and why I’m sharing it now.

Who has time to intentionally sit in silence? Who makes that time for themselves? I think I need to find opportunities to do this, to ‘unplug’ from external thoughts and not just sit in, but be in silence. I wonder if the ever-present smartphone has made some people afraid of the silence of being alone?