“Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.”― Wayne Cordeiro

I cannot genuinely articulate what solitude has truly done for me except that it offered an exquisite mirror for self reflection…

Our perceived lives are all about our perspectives. At any given moment in time we have a choice to remove one way of thinking and replace it with a new one.  In this shift, we realize the  profound potential of our human mind- that which is dictating our every move, our every feeling and our very REALity. What we believe internally, we begin to see externally. We are co-manifesting the external world based on the inner world we are responsible for creating.  In this, we must realize the importance in perception. When life becomes cloudy we must back the fuck away from the picture because we have gotten too damn close. No clarity will come from that.  Make room to readjust — and the clouds will clear to reveal. Let us consider…

Noise for the sake of noise:

In thinking about the many ways we can alter our reality by tilting our heads and seeing things in new light… i think it is important to address the noisiness. The noisiness of our lives and that in the world. A lot of our perceived problems stem from too damn much going on- we need stillness. We need the pauses. They are the moments that help us to appreciate— all the rest. They are what help us to truly hear. Silence is a true gift. We are bombarded by words- we speak so many of them all of the time–to ourselves and to others. We fill the voids to distract from perpetuated thoughts that bombard or block truth. Let us appreciate the gift of silence— the great soundscape of stillness –let us learn to enjoy it for ourselves and share it with others.

“[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead.”― Wallace Stegner

 

Happiness in our Togetherness and Happiness in our Apart-ness: 

I have heard it said that “Happiness is only real when shared” and I somewhat disagree. There have been moments of great joy and sorrow in my solo-ness. I have enjoyed a lot all on my own. And I own that sorrow and that happiness and wear them like crowns. Those were very precious times of experiencing pure (and very real) moments. But, I did come to appreciate the difference in things felt all alone and those that were shared. Because, there is a difference there. There is a difference in being able to hold that sacred space of enjoying something all. by. your.self. AND then on the other side of the coin, there is something honest about learning how to relate and walk together, with others through those moments of happiness and sorrow– They are both important in their own very real and important ways. In my own discovery I will say, it was only after feeling my own happiness and my own solitude- and learning how to work with those feelings on my own- that I feel even remotely equipped to start receiving the gift of authentically sharing that with others. It was in my isolation that I discovered a real human desire to share.

“It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”―Stephen Fry

 

Merging with Authenticity: 

We are mostly afraid of ourselves and others. We keep ours true desires at bay and we keep people we care about at a distance   because we perceive separation as our natural state of being. But, what if we moved closer towards the discomfort rather than away from it? What might be revealed if we start the process of merging with our authentic selves and that of those around us?

“People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as she drives up the onramp. She says, “People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.” Though that sentence shouldn’t bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I’m eighteen and it’s December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that had splattered on the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at an airport in New Hampshire. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my gray argyle vest, which seems vaguely more eastern than before, especially next to Blair’s clean tight jeans and her pale-blue shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge than “I’m pretty sure Muriel is anorexic” or the singer on the radio crying out about magnetic waves. Nothing else seems to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blaire’s car. All it comes down to is the fact that I’m a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven’t seen for four months and people are afraid to merge.”― Bret Easton Ellis

 

Trying for the sake of trying:

What have we got to lose in examining any of this? The way we look at things, the way we isolate, hibernate or share… the result of thorough self examination might be learning how to put our true-nature at the forefront of our lives.  In the end… most of this won’t really matter. So,  we are able to say we figured out who we were or where we were, or who we wanted to be or where we wanted to go– to me, that seems like something really worth trying even if its just for the pure sake of trying.  Or even just simply acknowledging that we are the source of creating and altering all of this at any given time… that would be an amazing way to live a life.

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.” ― Charles Bukowski