THE ART OF LONELINESS

Loneliness is depressing.  The dictionary defines the word as isolation. Imagine yourself living in a large bungalow, which is completely empty. You can live for a day, a week, maybe a month if you have that much will power. In the beginning it will seem peaceful, and you would wish if you could live like this for the rest of your life. That’s your inner self gratifying. So your ego makes you feel happy by letting you enjoy that emptiness. Then what? After sometime the inner self feels insecure. There is no fuel to keep the fire going inside of you. So it forces the ego to find ways to ignite that fire again. That’s when you feel lonely. You have exhausted your resources to live by staying alone. In search of that fire we become restless and move out of that place. Live somewhere else, soon the fuel is exhausted and again we start searching. And it keeps going on till we die. Can this be ended? Does loneliness have an answer? Different people have different answers to this. A guy going for a job from 7 to 5 in a day finds his fuel by staying on in his office till late and coming home when its time to sleep.  For a woman who takes care of her kids and her husband, sends them off to school and office finds her fuel in cooking for them when they’ll be back. What if the guy didn’t have that job and the lady didn’t have her husband and kids? There would be no fuel to ignite that fire in them. Is it possible to live without igniting that fire in you? No, it isn’t. Because we are human beings. We need something to depend on, something to laugh at and something to cry for. Otherwise we wouldn’t be called human beings.

Is there an ideal fuel that will ignite the fire within us? No, there isn’t. Our mind needs something new constantly to build on. There are people in this world who are satisfied with what they have. Like a cook, who knows to cook a few dishes, goes on cooking the same dishes over and over again. And doesn’t get tired of doing that. He accepts the fact that that is his world and he has to live in that. It works for him, so no problem. But for those who can’t do that its a tough road ahead. You need to keep finding things to satisfy yourself. Its not about finding those things that will ignite the fire. But its about learning to keep the fire going even when there is no fuel to ignite it. That is difficult. I myself fail many times but one thing is for sure its not impossible. Even sitting in a room all alone can light it up by just wanting that to happen. It’s simple as that. Our mind is like a lion. You can tame it if you train it. It will do as you say. You want to be happy? Tell your mind what you want and it will do that. It takes practice.

Our mind has a mind of its own. Like the lion, it will try to test its boundaries again and again. If you give in, it knows it can over power you. If you say no, it will know its limit and learn to stay within it. Like I said nothing is impossible. Our brain has the capacity to control us and we have the capacity to control it. You need to choose -either your mind controls you or you control it. Then it will follow your instructions like the lion would and it will not kill you.