Why Learn To Be Alone Is an Opportunity for Personal Growth

Qualifying emotions as good or bad is wrong. Loneliness, as it happens with sadness, laziness, doubt, or anger, one must consider the context, intensity, meaning, and handling of the feeling to assess whether it is a tool of power or a weapon of destruction. In other words, the important thing is not loneliness, but the interpretation and the use we make of it.

It is quite common to conceive of loneliness as a torment endured by all people of all times and places, and therefore, we have to get rid of it at all costs, since it is the common enemy of our species.

The truth is that there are several positions regarding its interpretation. At first, some say that affection is a second-class need, since the basic needs of the middle class were not satisfied, a rudimentary way of life was reduced to obtaining food, clothing, and shelter. The prevailing age of life in their lives would not let them think enough to fall into the thoughts of loneliness.

Perhaps it was the economic and social progress of the changes that the enlightenment brought with it, or the incredible industrial, technological, and scientific revolutions that have taken place since the Victorian era.

In any case, society is no longer adaptive. Society got tired of just having a plate on the table, a roof to sleep under, and shoes to wear. Society began to want more, began to want security, fulfillment, and something very important today, affection.

The Importance of Affection in Today's Society

On the other hand, some say that affection is the first-rate need. This aspect is the one with the most scientific support. The development of deep and intimate emotional ties with other conscious entities has always been important. The problem arises when one is completely unable to bear his own presence. These types of individuals will desperately search for people who fill the lack of tolerance for their person.

"How am I going to spend the rest of my life without someone by my side to satisfy my whims, without someone by my side to disperse my worries"

When this desire for accompaniment, whose origin is rather neurotic, does not materialize, tantrums and pleas begin.

I think both versions have their part of the reason. I find it hard to believe that people in medieval times did not feel bad about being a forgotten and isolated subject. We only have to go to Genesis to observe that loneliness is one of the first evils described in the bible. However, gentrification in recent years has also reduced our ability to control emotions.

As a result of a poor emotional issue, we consume content to try to fill in some way the isolation that has taken over our conscience in the hope that knowing that we are alone does not suppose an incessant martyrdom.

There Is No Food, Film or Drug Capable of Solving This Problem

Remember, the problem is not loneliness as a concept, although it seems hard to believe. The problem is that you have not learned to play in your favor.

This is not easy at all. It is not easy to resist adversity when appearance destroys your motivation.

Speaking in more clinical terms, chronic loneliness can result in a more serious problem than is commonly believed. This condition is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Chronic loneliness also shows an increase in the levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) and weakened the effects of dopamine (The happiness hormone).

Prolonged secretion of cortisol has catastrophic consequences on the body; anxiety, depression, sleep problems, digestion problems, easy to accumulate fat, etc.

Everything Has Its Limits

But mind you, I've mentioned chronic loneliness, not just loneliness. The idea seems clear. Everything has its limits. Being crestfallen, off, something or someone tells you that you have to continue, and you continue. It is there, continuing against the difficulty when you begin to wake up.

Is It True That You Can Live in Loneliness?

The most avant-garde empirical evidence seems to confirm that it is not the most attractive of ideas, yet its opposite is not true either. We do not have to be surrounded by people 24 hours a day.

The more you think, the more you feel that the answer is closer and closer.

Why are there times when I feel alone being accompanied, and on the contrary, other times I feel accompanied being alone?

In Search of a Reference as a Guide

The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was able to connect in a masterful way with the reader, and it was not an accident. It has not so much to do with his academic brilliance. But with his experience in solitude. When he was young, Kierkegaard fell madly in love with Regina Olsen, he became a muse of her writings, his reason for existing, he even planned his wedding with her for almost a year. She seemed to be, indisputably, the woman of his life, however, something was wrong with his head. There came a point where, at a very high emotional cost, he decided to break her commitment and prepare for a life of celibacy.

Why a happy person should go to solitude having had with him a person who would accompany him the rest of his days. He felt that he could only achieve the best version of himself from loneliness.

For him, each affective sensation was a gold mine to transform his emotional state into art, and in that way, empathize with people with an infinitely greater degree of depth. For better or for worse, he judged his marriage as a distraction from his creative process and his mental abstraction.

The author did not deny that it was a hard journey, especially at the beginning of it. What allowed him to evolve in a comprehensive way was his ability to judge the situation from another point of view. While Victorian society paid homage to family order and ecclesiastical worship, the writer devoted himself body and soul to deepening himself and in this way, bringing out the best he had, transforming them into authentic masterpieces.

Is true that modern psychology shows that it is extremely important to have a satisfactory social circle to achieve well-being. This testimony is a clear example of a man who knew how to take advantage of his loneliness to unimaginable limits, by connecting with his psyche as few people have achieved.

The Importance of Loneliness

Loneliness is an intimate component that builds poets, musicians, thinkers, entrepreneurs, mathematicians. You still have the slightest doubt that using the right approach can build you too? I am not saying that you have to go to the extreme like Kierkegaard, but if it is convenient for you to question. In what aspects does not have the help of anyone benefit me?

Albert Camus in one of his frequent epiphanies of loneliness said.

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

Loneliness is a brilliant madness that unleashes imagination, innovation, productivity, intimacy, and spirituality. The value of being alone with our own conscience is incalculable.

Normally we perceive the typical figure of the misunderstood genius as an outstanding individual in intellectual terms and more deficient in emotional matters. In fact, there are few times in which this stereotype is fulfilled; Arthur Schopenhauer, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin. However, this is not always the case. There are certain geniuses who, despite being physically isolated, do not qualify their loneliness as an unpleasant phenomenon, but as the best opportunity to develop as individuals.

The true geniuses do not isolate themselves, rather they communicate in a different way, they read, listen, debate, meditate, reflect, create and dream; Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla, Hedy Lamarr, one ends up realizing that there is a cast of thinkers who have woven a network of knowledge so extensive that it becomes incomprehensible to others. Plato, a follower of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle. Benjamin Graham, a follower of Irving Fisher and teacher of Warren Buffet. It is this type of people who revolutionize the paradigm and change the rules of the game.

It is no longer just the fact that loneliness can make you resilient, resourceful, proactive, effective, aware, wise and, strong. It is that when one knows how to appreciate the greatness that solitude hides, one is conditioned to enjoy it until the moment in which the company demands much less than before.

"My loneliness is not by the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my loneliness, without, in exchange, offer me a real company"

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Being alone is not the same as feeling lonely, one can feel lonely even surrounded by people, the statement "My loneliness is not by the presence or absence of people" describes it perfectly. You do not have to feel lonely being alone or feel company being accompanied.

Loneliness manifests itself when the quality of our social relationships is not comforting enough. There has not been a sympathetic, deep connection with other people, and therefore, the subject does not really feel valued by them. All this causes the absence of the feeling of participation, usefulness, and belonging.

To stop feeling lonely, regardless of whether you are or not, you have to develop the intimate component. Of course, one can be intimate with others, but also with oneself.

In this way, rejecting the accompaniment will lead us to a totally different type of connection. A pleasant connection that is based on meditation, abstraction, and creation. The feeling that you are nothing and nobody cares about you disappears.

From the moment you decide on a purpose and design a plan to materialize it, you take repeated action, enjoy the journey and add value to the world. Your sense of participation, usefulness, and belonging is completely restored.

Introspective transcendence has taken shape, as the desire to be with others has been replaced by a desire for force majeure. Move steadily toward your potential.

Books about loneliness:

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin - Søren Kierkegaard

Happy Death - Albert Camus

The Power of Self-Dependence: Allowing Yourself to Live Life on Your Own Terms - Jorge Bucay