Aloneness or Loneliness?

I read an article by @HerBAE titled "Silence and solitude". He talked about how solitude is important and why we should all try to practice solitude in our lives. As a person who has felt and has eventually fallen in love with the feeling of being in positive isolation, I have been often misunderstood as someone who's shy and doesn't like associating with people. People see me as a person with many insecurities (not to deny the fact that I do have them) because according to them, people with a lot of insecurities tend to avoid people in general so that they won't get hurt, thereby ending up as lonely people. The few close friends that I have however know that I am not shy. I can be really freaky with those that I am very close with but however the sweetness of human interactions, I find the most peace in being alone.

There's a very distinctive difference between being alone and being lonely. It is very saddening and even offensive to hear people confuse the two.

Loneliness is a phenomena of the heart or some emotion. It can be likened to a feeling of emptiness and incompleteness that makes you long for something that sometimes you are not even sure of. I believe a person can appear lively and extroverted outwardly and still be the most lonely person you've ever come across. Loneliness has nothing to do with isolation, it has to do with emptiness. When loneliness becomes chronic or extreme, it spreads. Normally you feel an emptiness inside you and once in a while, a person or thing feels in that emptiness but when it's gone, you feel it again. When a person sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss of loneliness, they drown. They drown in the sense that that emptiness spreads and creates more void that needs to be filled in a person's soul. If it gets worse, unpleasant stuff happens. A person could end up depressed, suffer from anxiety or worse, commit suicide to end their suffering.

Aloneness on the other hand is a feeling of wholeness and unity of being. When in solitude, there's usually no feeling of emptiness and there's no abyss to fall into. The only thing we fall into is our consciousness which is the depths of our being. In aloneness, we don't avoid people because we're insecure, we spend more time alone because we value our own company to that of others. You'll have to prove that your company is better than our solitude for you to be accepted by us, that's why introverts seem antisocial when that's not the case, at least that's not the case for my type of introvertnedness because there sure are introverts who are introverts so a very different reason. People who prioritise alone time are just more selective with the people they associate with.

Aloneness or solitude can be likened to meditation because there's this feeling of connectedness we experience. We feel connected to the deepest roots of our being, the people and things around us and nature. People who find happiness in solitude are often perceived as nerdy, weird, mystic, spiritual or religious. While any of these could be the reason, other reasons do exist. For me I value my solitude because of the spiritual journey I have embarked in. I think the journey to self discovery is one of the most intriguing and fulfilling, yet excruciatingly painful journey a person would ever embark on. It is a life long journey that has no end.

There are other differences between the two but I would like to stop here. I believe I have done some justice to the topic.

Thanks for reading,

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Yours Layly,

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This article was originally published on hive with some editing.