Am breaking all the rules with today’s thoughts, and….
In reading the paper, watching news programs, and listening to my friends, it seems there are some things we are supposed to hold inside from now until into the New Year. Actually, the advice is to get into a crowd or busy place….you know, get with the spirit of the season, take the mind off oneself and things should ‘clear up’ or ‘ease up.’ Or we are asked to compare our problems with the less fortunate and that should ‘help’. We are being asked to rationalize away our feelings. Good grief!
On the other hand, obviously by another ‘wise’ crowd (so many wise people, and look at the world! Sigh..), we are told to ‘be here now’…’be in the present’…..there’s a whole publishing niche that dwells on the theme of NOW.
Wouldn’t NOW be like experiencing where one is, right NOW? If I am sad, how can I be ‘sad/not sad’? If I am concerned, how can I be otherwise, except to pretend or suppress something?
So, which is it? Be in the NOW, or suppress…..which would be more real? Or is it the season to be unreal, for just a few days more?
There is something that hovers over me and I cannot quite put a label on it, but it feels like….loneliness. Hmmm. Yeah, I get lonely, even in the midst of my friends. Lonely for what used to be, and even for ‘what might have been.’ Can I miss things that didn’t happen? I think those are the hardest to get past. If they were easy, why are they still pushing themselves into my mind?
That special someone who never became a part of my life…I feel lonely without her! Catching a scent or seeing a lock of hair that reminds me of someone or some place. A laugh, some music, a passage in a book or a scene in a movie. These flood me with emotion and loneliness gets exposed.
Thoughts creep into my mind, “Why didn’t I make that phone call, answer that letter, say Yes to that invitation, look at that opportunity…. if only a certain person had been there at that place…..with me.” These all make me lonely, maybe more so during the holidays because the focus is on togetherness.
Sometimes loss comes across like a loneliness. We are told those things I mentioned above, are things we regret….but isn’t regret some kind of ‘explanation’? I don’t feel regret, I feel lonely! Regret…that sounds artificial…..so textbook!
When you try to act jolly over top of loneliness, it shows. We think we turn people away because we are showing loneliness….nope, it’s because we are acting weird! We are trying not to be real and it shows! Hint: Just ask them!
Seems to me, that being authentically lonely when I am lonely is the appropriate thing to do……it is actually a gift to others, like a permission to be truly alive…..forget about the ‘helpers’ who suggest I am being noble in trying to overcome the loneliness.
Clark Moustakas says that by truly experiencing loneliness, “the individual affirms his being and authenticity. When positively embraced and confronted, loneliness has a salutary role: the integration and deepening of self. Through loneliness, the individual “discovers life, who he is, what he really wants, the meaning of his existence, and the true nature of his relation with others.”
We could let the loneliness take us where it needs to. We are a planet of common folk and since this is so, we miss the community feeling of connection that is hidden deep inside each of us.
I feel there may be something extra-ordinary, pulling at me from the other side of it all…actually, I am sure there is, I don’t know what it is….and it is probably something that really matters!
Let us be together in this mystical, magical, awesome season with every human emotion and feeling we have. It is all welcome. It’s who we are.
Yes, I love you all.
Rich