Quite often, people associate the word alone with loneliness. Similarly, people cannot imagine feeling lonely when in a relationship. Nevertheless, I was most lonely during my marriage. Whenever I am alone, I am loving my solitude. The key driver is (lack of) self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance seems easy enough. Well, it’s not. Many – if not most – people are not satisfied with their appearance (ie, Body) and/or (parts of) their character (ie, Mind). The resulting dissatisfaction (ie, negativity) may affect our personality (ie, Soul).
Hence, negative feelings like loneliness could be viewed as an imbalance of the Body, Mind & Soul triangle. Moreover, negativity is a major turn-off for people as it feels like an infectious disease that could contaminate you as well. Self-acceptance is the remedy and solution.
Once again, self-acceptance is far from easy. Accepting your decades-long and often self-diagnosed inner and outer flaws implies that you will no longer believe in becoming the person that you want to be – deep down. The result is that perception and reality will finally merge. You will then be the person that you need to be. See my blogs on Needs, Wants & Beliefs.
From a macro perspective, the loneliness epidemic is driven by:
- Urbanisation: the decline of family life (eg, Body);
- Liberalism: the decline of the collective (eg, Mind).
- Secularization: the decline of faith and/or religion (eg, Soul);
- Technology: the decline of self-acceptance.
Technology, including social media (eg, Facebook, Instagram), undermines our self-acceptance. It promotes our wants (eg, living a millionaire lifestyle) and beliefs (eg, we are beautiful people). The word ‘selfie’ often equals ‘self-love‘ or – worse – narcissism.
Solitude and loneliness are opposite basic human emotions regarding ‘being alone’. Either you fear loneliness or you love solitude. They either represent a negative or a positive outlook on life. Please also see my 2015 and 2016 blogs: Love and the 6-8 basic human emotions, Human Emotions: a new classification and Human Emotions (2): a revisit.
There is no human (ON/OFF) switch between a negative and a positive outlook on life. Similarly, self-acceptance is an introspective journey (eg, for barriers) rather than a destination.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” A quote by Persian philosopher Rumi (1207-1273).
Beautiful People (2019) by Ed Sheeran feat. Khalid
artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Beautiful people
Drop top, designer clothes
Front row at fashion shows
“What d’you do?” and “Who d’you know?”
Inside the world of beautiful people
Champagne and rolled-up notes
Prenups and broken homes
Surrounded, but still alone
Let’s leave the party
Note: all markings (bold, italic, underlining) by LO unless stated otherwise
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