I'm still getting my bearings here on Hive, but I opened up to a contest on Ladies of Hive for this week with the question:
1️⃣ Why are there so many people who are lonely? Why is it so hard for people to make real connections when almost everyone wants to make real connections?
I felt the pull to take part ... my first contest post!
The question of loneliness has been on my mind since I lost my parents a year and a half ago, 7 days apart. The journey of grief both internal and external is something that has circled around my own loss.
Since September of 2021, I've been on a healing soul journey that's opened me up to practices, modalities, healing arts, creativity, expressions and gratitude. Through these I've sought answers to many questions, one being: What is loneliness? Why are so many people afraid of it?
In my own excavations the most profound healing has been in my own presence. Being in the absolute quietness of me, of my own breath, body, mind and energy. The place where I Am is more than just two words. Here I can cry, be vulnerable, feel into my history, find honesty, recognize my conditioning responses, experience my energetic life. The place within us that is only ours. That's not to say that we don't need connection. We crave connection as human beings, but I believe we also need to learn to live with our own skin and our own experience.
In the Merriam Webster dictionary Loneliness is defined as:
a. being without company
b. cut off from others
c. not frequented by human beings
d. sad from being alone
e. producing a feeling of bleakness or desolation
On dictionary.com Loneliness is defined as:
a. affected with, characterized by, or causing a depressing feeling of being alone; lonesome.
b. destitute of sympathetic or friendly companionship, intercourse, support, etc.:
c. lone; solitary; without company; companionless.
d. remote from places of human habitation; desolate; unfrequented; bleak:
e. standing apart; isolated:
All of the definitions are compounded with words like bleakness, desolation,isolation.
That got me thinking, who writes these definitions? What person is responsible for putting together a handful of letters, sounds and syllables that we, as a people, take for truth.
I wonder if Loneliness had a different definition, what the domino effect might be.
What if we began to respect, hold space for and actually strive to make time in our own skin to listen, heal, explore, investigate and allow ourselves to BE ourselves, free of other's presence. What if Loneliness became a dance to get to know ourselves better, to show up for our higher selves, to connect back to what we want, outside of other's influence?
Wouldn't that be amazing!
We might actually come back to our relationships invested and joyous and clear and grounded and loving to our bodies and minds.
The closer we got to ourselves, the more we would pull in others who were on our path.
I often think how we live in a world where the influence of other's is unending, between social media, teachers, work, commercial products, advertising, social pressure, etc. It's rare to get a moment wholly ours. Of course, these businesses and platforms don't want us to reconnect and decondition, they don't want to lose their stake in our existence. They want us to remain unaware, to not question their intentions, to need them in one way or another.
What if we don't need any of it. What if the same 10 people who defined Loneliness were just as lonely as the rest of us, they just had a little more pull in the editing room. Maybe they didn't want to be alone, so they made it normal to see loneliness as desolate, bleak and isolating? Maybe, if they had some real balls they would have given the middle finger to the norm and challenged us to believe that Loneliness is a gift when used with gratitude, self love and a fierce courage to dive into our own soul.
I am sorry for the loss of your loved ones. Loneliness is a complex issue because not all isolation is bad, but you also have to appreciate the disconnection from others and work on yourself. Hugs 🤗
!LADY
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Very interesting take. Totally speaks to folks needing to do work on their own spirit to attract others that they would want to cure their loneliness with.
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