I don't feel lonely very often. I've always been able to reside within my own thoughts and walk around examining my memories or exploring my recent experiences. I love to be alone sometimes, just so I can enjoy my own company. That's why, for me, the rare occasions of feeling lonely is an indirect gift that I should learn to treasure.
To me, being lonely and feeling lonely is different. The former is where you are left to your own devices, with no familiar face around to smile at you. The latter is where you are surrounded by loving faces, but yet you feel so detached. You may be joking, making a room full of person laugh, but you alone know that you are not smiling underneath.
There is something wistful yet beautiful about loneliness. No one really understands her until he has walked a mile with her by his side. Hence no one really understands a lonely person until he has felt lonely - utterly, dejectedly alone - at least once in his life. Perhaps that's why, for the sake of others, we should embrace loneliness and walk a while with her.
2 comments:
I absolutely love how you admittedly enjoy your own company! Me too, quite often. But I agree with your words whole heartedly. And I must say I've had my share of feeling lonely (being surrounded by friends) this past year. But knowing how hard simple things are, like Sunday afternoons, you really gain a sensitivity to those around you who may feel the same way but just don't say anything.
You're a very good writer.
An insight I read on this same topic which I thought i would share with you. I hope you know that even if you feel lonely. remember I love you and you really are my best friend. It really hit me today that you are the only one who knows me in the way that you do. Because we have shared experiences that can never be repeated or replaced by any other person. I love you.
The poem is entitled “The Wanderer.” The teller describes himself wandering alone; having lost his leader and his people in battle, he is now searching for a new home—a place of warmth and leadership. To the wanderer all weather is wintry and all landscapes are lonely. Here are a few excerpts from this poem, translated into modern English:
There is now none of the living to whom I dare clearly say my heart’s thought. . . .
. . . After the time, in years long past, that I covered my [leader] in the darkness of earth; and thence downcast I crossed over the woven waves, winter-sad, yearning for a hall . . . where, far or near, I might find one who should know of my people or would comfort me friendless, receive me with gladness.In the final stanza of the poem, the narrative voice shifts to include all people, including us, suggesting that the wanderer’s experience is universal. In other words, all of us are wanderers. Although we may wrap our bodies in many layers of comfort—clothes, blankets, carpets, roofs, and walls—we cannot escape the winters of this world. And although we may surround ourselves with other people at the office, the school, or the stadium, we remain fundamentally alone, even in a crowd.
Coincidentally, we have another text, also approximately 1,500 years old, that tells of a wanderer named Moroni, the son of Mormon, who witnessed the destruction of his people and spent many years wandering the landscape alone. He wrote: “I even remain alone to write the sad tale of the destruction of my people. But behold, they are gone, . . . for I am alone. My father hath been slain in battle, and all my kinsfolk, and I have not friends nor wither to go” (Mormon 8:3, 5). He also said, “I wander whithersoever I can for the safety of mine own life” (Moroni 1:3).
However, Moroni was not without a leader. He knew that God lives, and he had a living testimony of Jesus Christ, which he shared with us:
And then shall ye know that I have seen Jesus, and that he hath talked with me face to face, and that he told me in plain humility, even as a man telleth another in mine own language, concerning these things; . . .
And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written, that the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost . . . may be and abide in you forever. [Ether 12:39, 41]Repeatedly in the scriptures the Lord asks us to seek His face through the words of prophets who have found His face. Some of us will take a little longer than others. The Brother of Jared did not see His face until he had first recognized and grasped the hand of the Lord in his life. Although loneliness may be our universal condition, face-to-face leadership is our eternal end. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
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