What to Do with Loneliness...

Carl Jung said, “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.“

I think humanity is really quite lonely.  

Just look at us.

Most people I know in relationships do not feel safe to share their inner most being.  Most people I know are barely able to share their most basic version of themselves, even with themselves.  It is like we have all decided that intimacy and connection are too lofty of goals so we have all set our sights on some other place, some other time. And so we exist in real time in this in between place where we are never going to adequately address our own loneliness or really do much to alleviate it in others.

I started this blog seven years ago because I was lonely.  Actually, I had a way bigger life back then.  My social circle was a lot larger and my job bigger and more demanding.  But I didn’t feel at home in my own life. In fact, what I really felt but was too scared to say it at the time, was that I really felt like I was renting my life.  It wasn’t really mine.  It was this life lease that came because other people rented it out to me.  I didn’t feel like I was at the hub of my own life.  I was just renting time and space that others allotted me.

This blog was about reclamation.  An honesty about who I am and what I am and what I think and feel.  It seems so weird that I would need a blog to own that which I could not own myself.  But I needed the distance of the written word to speak for me.  Because the pressure of interpersonal relating was just too much for my comfort with honesty to withstand.

I need this space to speak, to tell my truth.

I needed to create the space I felt safe to share myself in...because I could not find it “out there.”

In fact, this whole writing endeavor was to allow you to see me.  Grant you access to the parts of me I keep locked away, tucked neatly behind the veneer I so artfully curated to distract you from seeing all that I didn’t want you to see.

I needed this space right here to tell you what matters to me most and how I feel about it in order to no longer be alone with it.  Sometimes I feel like NRT is my confessional.  And you are the receivers of my truths.  I am not sure any of you really wanted that to be the case, but, here we are...

And I will tell you I feel less alone since I started it.  I really didn’t want to share so publicly all that I feel, hope, dream, fear, etc.  I was really hoping to keep all of that under wraps and a lot more quiet than, well, what this has become. But I will also, at the very same time, say that I felt compelled, pushed even to share in this way despite the angst, the fear and the complete equally compelling desire not to.

I don't think loneliness is about how many people you have in your life. I think, instead, loneliness is about having a whole host of people in your life and still not being able to say what you need to say and tell thuths you must tell. I think loneliness, instead, is about having at least one person on the planet with whom you can share your truth AND feel safe while doing it. Seems to me healing begins when we learn to share what matters most to us so that we are, in fact, no longer alone with it.

So our journey is one of intimacy and connection, and courage and bravery. The work is always internal. And it is always the work of letting yourself be known and seen for who you really are.

Be you, that is all. AND, share that with at least one other human on the planet.

Again, still...