Lonely Or Alone?

I read an article a couple of years ago.

Couldn’t tell you who wrote it or where I read it but its contents hit a nerve and it stuck with me.

Are you lonely or alone?

It hit a nerve because sometimes at social functions when I didn’t want to be seen I was ultimately lonely.

On the flip side I can be quite happy being alone yet I don’t feel lonely – how can that be?

I believe it has to do with your inner state of being.

What do you think?

SLEEPOVERS AND FREEDOM

When my son was little and he’d go off to his grandparents for a sleep over I would plan out what I’d do with my freedom for the weekend, whether that was going shop browsing, going for a coffee with a friend, a date night with my other half, or having a pamper session at a spa.

Sometimes I’d think about baking, I used to love baking.

Sometimes, I’d plan to read all the books I had piling up that I never seemed to have time for.

Sometimes I planned to just get to grips with housework – I know, REALLY fun right!

Ultimately though ...

I DID NOTHING

I would sit with my plans wondering what my son was up to.

I would wander round the house half heartedly doing things.

I’d get agitated.

And I felt utterly and totally alone and lonely at the same time.

Does that make sense?

WHY did I feel like that?

Because my focus wasn’t there.  My son was my focus.  I was always doing something with him and when I got that much needed down time I didn’t have the faintest idea what I really wanted to do with myself.

I just flip flopped from one thing to other and when he arrived home it was like all the lights had been turned on again and my energy levels rose.

It was like I’d been put on pause for the whole weekend and I achieved nothing by doing nothing.

Yes, sometimes doing nothing is a good thing. I get it. Sometimes I do just that – nothing, and I’m ok with that.

But when I’d planned to do so many things I wouldn’t normally get to do I would feel like I’d completely wasted the whole weekend. 

A LOADED QUESTION

My son would babble away at what he’d been doing and then he’d ask me “what did you do Mummy?”

I’d go blank. I couldn’t look at him and say “well, actually sunshine, I missed you so much I didn’t know what to do with myself, I felt so lost and alone without you so I did absolutely nothing”.

I could have said that but I never did. He’s a sensitive soul and I didn’t want him taking that on board.

I usually replied somewhere along the lines of “well I caught up on housework, fixed that broken toy, went for a walk”.  Anything to avoid admitting to myself what I was thinking and feeling.

My son (who’s 19 as I type this post) and I have a close relationship, we’ve got a tight bond and I’m incredibly grateful for that.  We’ve talked about everything under the sun over the years as he’s grow up.

And yet I sometimes wonder if that bond wasn’t so tight would I be any different when he wasn’t around? 

The times he’d go off to camp with Scouts I was just the same, lost and lonely.

The times he’d go away with school I felt lost and lonely.

The times he went away with college.  I STILL FELT THE BLOODY SAME.

I would still mope about, flip flop from one thing to another wondering what he was getting up to and hoping as he got older he had the good sense not to follow his sometimes daft peers.

WHY DID I FEEL THE SAME EVERY TIME?

I realize now it was my thinking that would get me into trouble.

It was my thoughts that had me go on a “poor me” trip.  It was my thoughts that showed how glaringly obvious it was my social circle was so small. It was my thoughts that ultimately led to feeling sad about a lot of things.

HERE’S THE THING - THOUGHTS CREATE FEELINGS

Really? Yes. I just said so in that last sentence. It was my thoughts that ultimately led to feeling sad

It wasn’t the fact my son wasn’t around that had any impact at all.

It’s what I THOUGHT about it that had the impact.

Because here’s the other thing.  My son can be in the house, in his room doing his own thing and I can be elsewhere in the house and STILL feel lonely.

WHAT?

Did you just say “but he’s in the house!”  Yeah I know I get it.

He can be meeting up online with his friends from various groups, having a chat, having a laugh and I can be listening to him laughing and THINKING ho hum thoughts and ultimately FEELING crappy when I don’t want to.

Because my thoughts have spiraled into “he’s got a better social life than me”, “he knows so many more people than me”, “why am I so introverted?” the list goes on and on and on.

Our thoughts create our feelings.

Not the external circumstances.

My son wasn’t stood in front of me making me feel crap whilst he was laughing with his friends. He doesn’t have that kind of power to do that to anyone. He wasn’t physically doing anything to me.

I was doing it all to me.

With the power of thought.

Amazing really isn’t it, don’t you think?

We humans can use the power of thought to either make ourselves feel amazing or totally and utterly crap.

But get this, you’re only ever one thought away from happiness or one thought away from sadness. It all comes down to how much power we give that thought. The more we dwell on a crap thought, the more we humans make ourselves feel crap.  The more power we give a happy uplifting thought, the more we feel amazing.

THOUGHTS ARE LIKE BUBBLES

I’ll leave you with this...

Human thoughts are just like bubbles.  There’s nothing to them, they’re neutral.  But we humans have the power to blow a bubble so big it can become distorted.  Our low thoughts are like that.  Humans put focus and power into blowing it up until it resembles something else entirely.

Think of a bubble machine if you will, we’ve all seen them.  Some you plug into the mains, fill with soapy liquid and watch the bubbles come through.  Sometimes you can speed it up or slow it right down.

Human thought is the same.  We have thousands and thousands of thoughts every day, somewhere between 60,000 – 90,000 per day.  You can’t control thought.  It just happens.

What humans have though is free will to choose whether to focus on a thought or not.  Much like sitting in a meeting the thought pops into your head, “oh what shall I have for dinner tonight?” then just as quickly it’s dismissed.  It’s come in, it’s gone out. Simple. We’ve used our free will to choose not to dwell on what we’re going to have for dinner.

Same applies with ALL thought.  We humans have the free will to choose what to focus on. We can choose to make our life feel crappy, or make our life feel amazing. All with the power of thought.

The theosopher and philosopher Sydney Banks once said “Life is what you think it is”.

What do YOU think?