A friend recently showed me this beautiful little video by Tanya Davis called How to Be Alone, which, unsurprisingly, is about being okay (and ultimately being happy) with being alone. I was moved by the simplicity and truth in this lovely little poem, and inspired by her uniquely courageous and unapologetic perspective of solitude and loneliness.
It is quite easy to become dependent on others, and many of us become so immersed in our relationships that bits and pieces of our identity slip away until we are only able to define ourselves through our relationships with others. We often neglect ourselves by serving others and we forget that we can’t give fully to someone else until we truly know and love ourselves. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against love and human connection and exploring ourselves through our relationships with other people; I, like Ms. Davis, simply believe that there is much to be gained by forming and exploring a deep relationship with the self and not being afraid to do so in the comfort of your aloneness. In one of my favorite parts of the poem, Tanya writes,
Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
Maybe you’ve chosen to be alone, or perhaps you’ve been “left”; whatever the case may be, don’t be afraid to sit in the quiet of your solitude and become an observer of your thoughts and feelings. Be gentle with yourself, and enjoy the unique and liberating journey of self-exploration. “You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.”
Learn more about Tanya Davis and read her other poems and blog entries here. (I’ve copied the poem below from another site, so please forgive any errors I may have missed.)
How To Be Alone, by Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself in mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and meditation, no one will think less if you’re hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid-being-alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies, where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching, because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best and human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back, like a book of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting, gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might have never happened had you not been there by yourself.
Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts some essence of them maybe lost, or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself. Perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, were tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach. And it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
