2. In Solitude

To embrace solitude is to embrace self discovery, Run into aloneness with open arms and let it swallow you up – sit with silence and let it teach you what cannot be learned elsewhere. There’s liberation here.

Humans are deeply social species, during evolutionary times we relied on being in groups to hunt, to protect and to survive. Through time, the human body evolved mechanisms to reward social closeness – releasing oxytocin, what we know as the ‘love hormone’, and dopamine when interacting with pleasurable social interactions, almost making it an addiction to the mind and body to encourage us to seek connection again and again.  

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs state that connection and belonging, whether from friendships, intimacy or family, sits in the middle of Maslow’s pyramid, right after basic physiological and safety needs – and that without satisfying this level, it’s deemed as difficult to progress to higher levels like self –esteem and self-actualization. The self-determination theory states that as humans we have three innate psychological needs: 

(1)Autonomy – control over our actions

(2)Competence – feeling effective 

(3) Relatedness – feeling connected to others. 

Relatedness being the most essential for our mental health, claiming that without it we become isolated – as the self-identify theory states, belonging to a group helps form a stable sense of self and identity.  

But what if I was to oppose these theories, what if I was to say that we don’t need to satisfy connection and belonging to progress to self-esteem – that relatedness can lead to the possibility of lacking autonomy – what if we become isolated from trying to relate and belong somewhere we don’t fit in – what if the reach for belonging leads us to instability and lose of self? 

In today’s world, people have become thirstier for this addiction, the addiction of belonging, they’ve grown to fear to be lonely – to be alone. Humans have grown to take silence as rejection, they have adapted this instinct to not be alone or perceived as lonely at all costs, to avoid that ‘hollow’ feeling of being unwanted, unchosen or unseen – even to the extent that the thing they fear the most is being demonstrated by the people they surround themselves by all in the aims of ‘not being alone’. 

One of my biggest fears used to be being alone, this stemmed from high school, where everyone was in groups and anyone who was seen on their own was perceived as an outcast, a loner. I remember people wouldn’t even go to the bathroom alone simply because of the fear of being perceived as someone who didn’t have friends. But, with the more observant I became, I came to the realisation that many of us surround ourselves with people, desperately trying to find a place of belonging just for the sake of not having to feel the effects of loneliness, that we were blinded by the type of people we were surrounding ourselves by – that the places we were seeking company in, were in fact somewhere we would never truly be ourselves in – I say this because constantly trying to belong somewhere becomes extremely exhausting ; if you belong somewhere, you will naturally fit into place, you wouldn’t need to exhaust yourself out to achieve a sense of belonging.  

I feel as though people fear being alone because of two main reasons – they haven’t seen permeance therefore producing a dependence on others, or they haven’t learnt to experience their own silence. Both cases will lead a person to misinterpret and believe being alone for being lonely.  

Of course, being lonely is a natural feeling we all ,as humans, will experience, as it is what drives us to want to have connections – but being able to be alone and being comfortable with your own silence allows us to detach from a route that leads to dependency on others, we should be able to have a drive for connection without that connection being the very thing that drives us to loss of self. 

This doesn’t go to say that we shouldn’t seek connections, and all bonds are damaging –there are many connections I have made that have changed my life and my perspectives for the better. We can have connections, we can have relationships and find a comfort within them, but we should try, before anything, to find that comfort within ourselves – because as much as you desperately scavage around to belong somewhere, to someone, when the day comes – you will be entering your own grave alone.  So why fear being alone, when that is where our fate will end, why fear it when we can embrace it in ways where we can strive even if there was no one following behind. 

I strive best in solitude, in being alone, because for a while now I’ve come to understand that you will never be yourself the way you can be in your own presence, in your own silence. In solitude, there is an acceptance offered by the silence – an acceptance that will never match to one given by human connection – because logically, humans are designed to make mistakes, we are made to disappoint – and when you survive life with the mindset of expecting disappointment no matter who or what, solitude becomes your friend.  Being alone, everything and anything is within your control, there is no influence, no disturbance to what you do.  

 Constantly being surrounded by people means you are constantly trying to fit in, no matter how much you decline this, it utterly means you will constantly be trying to fit in, whether its people you just met or people you’ve known for years, trying to fit in will always be there, consciously or unconsciously – it’s in the form of being relatable, it’s in the form of trying to be funny and in the form of trying to be relevant. My solitude has made me lack horrifically in group settings or in any setting that involves socialising– I am not a social butterfly; I tend to stay quiet and just listen – simply because my desire to fit in doesn’t exist. I’ve found my selective few of people where I feel comfortable with and no longer carry an interest to fit in elsewhere – and this comes from being okay with being alone, because if you no longer seek to fit in, you will see the places you naturally belong and the places you don’t, it no longer becomes a game of aggressively trying to force a puzzle piece into a place where it doesn’t belong, because the more you try forcing this piece to fit, the more damage it will have – ultimately disfiguring its original state and preventing it from fitting in the place where it truly belonged.   

You don’t have to be liked by everyone; you don’t have to be seen as good or the best to everyone – these things aren’t what brings value you to you, value isn’t earnt via other people and what they think – value is non transactional – you make your own value, and constantly needing to be around people will place you in situations where you are surrounded by the wrong people – those who make your value a matter of transaction. 

Learning to be comfortable in being alone will allow you to form your own value, a kind that will be unshackled, undisturbed, no matter who you interact with.  Sometimes, it’s not even the company alone that people crave, but it’s the validation that comes with having company – the recognition that we exist, but this all roots back to you, in how you value yourself or even see yourself, without knowing what it’s like to be alone, you’ll never understand yourself truly, hence why so many people fear being alone – they fear never being understood. 

My solitude tends to be frowned upon by most, by those who can’t understand the importance of being comfortable in your own silence, your own time and your own presence. As much as it can be perceived as a blessing and a curse embodied in one, I will always view it as freedom – because my form of freedom isn’t happiness, something that is temporary – as all things that rise can also fall – my form of freedom is peace, and if it takes being alone to be at peace, then I’d never look back. Because within these walls of peace, I can grow to understand myself without overexplaining relentlessly trying to be understood, without having to make sense of the ‘whys’ to those who were never meant to understand to begin with – if i can make sense of the whys, or at least try to, to myself – why would I need to make sense of it to others? 

Making sense of something to someone whose never experienced walking in your shoes is like trying to describe colour to someone whose only ever seen in black and white.  

I tend to think of solitude as an astronaut drifting alone through the vastness of space – not lost but finally free from gravity, up there in great stillness they are utterly alone but not lonely. There is no noise but the rhythm of their own breath, no chaos but the quietness of their own thoughts. Each orbit around a distant world is reflection, and each sunrise he witnesses is a reminder that peace can exist without presence. The astronaut isn’t isolated – they are in communion with the universe. In solitude they don’t vanish, they expand – becoming small enough to be humble yet vast enough to feel infinite.

So, when solitude is frowned upon, my mind will always go to the astronaut, how they chose to leave earth behind, not out of exile but out of calling, knowing that space will drift them far beyond the crowds, that communication will grow thin – they still choose to go. Because without accepting being alone, the astronaut would’ve never seen the beauties beyond our world, they would’ve never experienced the kind of silence that is comforting rather than deafening.  

Solitude is what allows time to feel different – slower, gentler – it’s what allows my thoughts to stretch without interruption. Being okay with being alone allows you to notice things you would’ve never noticed in noise, it allows you to experience what peace sounds like when no one else is speaking – as selfish as it sounds – but for you to grow, for you to develop your character into something you want it to become, you have to learn to be okay with your own presence – because once you do, no one can influence who or what you become, that power is left to you to consume.  

Become that astronaut who looks out at earth – seeing how small and far it truly is – coming to the realisation of how much you carry inside, whether a weight or a potential, that no one ever sees, and in that very moment solitude is no longer a fear, an emptiness – its expanse. A place where you rediscover your own voice.