The Importance of Isolation
There are times in life, when you are alone. You sit in your room, thinking about a funny thing that happened xyz days ago.
You get up happily, almost waddling like a duck with happiness as you go to your partner/friend/sibling to tell the story.
Now there are two scenarios that happen:
- You say, “OMG, remember that, remember when-" And they nod, smiling at you and then go back to whatever they were doing. Your shoulders slump, and you come back to your room, sitting on your bed again.
- Or, they may actually not hear you, being like, “Yeah, I am busy right now, Oh that? Haha yeah crazy times. Bye!”
This is life. Isolation and boredom are the two challenges of this vast experience of earth.
You either do get to tell your story, but the response is underwhelming. Or when you tell them your story, there is a lack of response.
Now you might be thinking,
“And what about the pure, beautiful responses we do get?”
That’s not the topic here right now. I’m talking about the slow, lazy days where no one is available to listen to you.
Or maybe you just don’t feel like speaking.
I have had days and weeks go by, without a valuable interaction or experience with anyone.
And that does effect us mentally. We get more anxious and sad, feeling lonely.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Every human came into this earth alone, and will go away, alone and unarmed. Isolation doesn’t have to be saddening.
Isolation, upto an extent ofcourse, is the biggest truth of life. Sometimes people are just buried, knee-deep into their own lives.
And that’s just a bitter truth of life itself. But it doesn’t have to be bitter. It can be bittersweet in itself.
If only we look closer at the isolation and extract our inner selves from it.
The joy that comes from an inner awakening, truly realising, you’re a whole world in yourself.
Isolation doesn’t always elicit joy though. But there are some important lessons in it.
Lessons of Isolation
- You get to appreciate the good people in your life, instead of taking them for granted. For example, I didn’t meet my friends for a good chunk of this month. So today, we had a good time together and it was heartwarming.
- You meet your inner self. You realise how important it is to sit with your feelings. Give them time, ponder on your thoughts. Ponder on your habits. For example, you can think of why you are eating so much junk food lately. Is it just out of boredom, or is it something deeper? Like emotional eating. (I’ll discuss emotional eating in a separate article.)
- You learn to depend on yourself too. Some people are just truly interconnected with others. It’s as if, someone doesn’t tell them they’re pretty in a suit/dress, they’ll throw it in the trash without a second thought. Or if someone doesn’t give them the time of the day they go into deep sadness and throw a fit. That is just a child who never grew up. It’s like a toddler throwing a fit or when a teenager cares too much of what others think. But they’re fully grown adults! What they need, is a small dose of isolation to understand that life doesn’t revolve around them.
- You get a mental break from over-socializing. You also charge yourself back up, when you get burned out of social interactions. (That is, if you’re like me who has to charge herself upto 200 percent after social gatherings. Especially for those special sweet people, who suck the life out of you by babbling about every single detail of their lives. May God bless their tiny hearts.)
So, isolation in small doses, is absolutely necessary for our survival like socializing. It’s a delicate dance between the two, that creates a harmony in our social and personal lives.
Takeaways
- Isolation is as much a fixed truth of life as socializing.
- It doesn’t have to bitter and saddening.
- Cheer up, you can be your biggest cheerleader.
- Just remember to keep a balance. Don’t go locking yourself up in your room because, “Malika said so!”
- Live your best life as much as you can. People come and go, but you are a constant in your own life.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow!
