Loneliness and solitude - what are the differences between these two?

"You think you are alive because you breathe air?

Shame on you, that you are alive in such a limited way.

Don't be without Love, so you won't feel dead.

Die in Love, and stay alive forever."

(Rumi)

He said it 800 years ago, but today it is still more actual than ever. We breathe to our daily schedules, but we don't live. Our eyes are mesmerized but thousands non-magical hooks, online and offline, on the bus, on the street's sideways, on the radio or TV. In only one day we are exposed to 490 adds, and daily media consumption for a typical adult is measured as 9.8 hours. We watch screens instead of living, our focus is directed in one endless loop, day after day. So, I will ask you one more time: do you think you are alive because you breathe air?

Especially now, spending more time at home, what we will do do become better? How many movies, TV series (honestly, there are only 4 series of Casa de Papel and i am already at the half of the last season), documentaries, anime or cartoons can we watch before it is too much? I am trying to do something different, that i always wanted but i did not have the time, but even this is not enough. What it is missing from my life, that even Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime cannot give me?

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

(Albert Einstein)

We use our smartphone as a shield, as a distraction and as a obsession, being simultaneous our remedy for solitude (but we are being socially active without going out from the house), as a distraction from the current problems and difficulties (at least we are not overcompensating through eating) or as an obsession in our race for more dopamine based rewards (see the latest high addictive games, able to create in our brain a reaction similar with heroin). What can we do?

One day per week without mobile.

Mindfulness walk - wall slowly paying attention to all our 5 senses, internally and externally. We will look around, feel the wind on the skin, smell, taste, but we will also be aware of our internal sensations, our emotions, our state of mind.

Touch, hug, make love, try to find all those rewarding feeling through some oxytocin based neuronal path instead of dopamine based ones.

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop."

Rumi said centuries ago. Despite this many of us will still feel different and set apart from the humanity, trying to individualize themselves instead of embracing the big human family. In doing this, we separate, we start to feel lonely, instead of enjoying the solitude. We ignore the pain of others, even if we remember what Albert Schweitzer said: "No one must shut his eyes and regard as nonexistent the suffering of which he spared himself the sight.". The failure to provide alternatives for all the children, women and men of Aleppo, for all the refugees trying to escape from Syria, it is not our government failure, but it is our personal failure in an equal measure. An action, even the smallest one, can create a ripple effect and reach unexpected results. Or as Paulo Coelho said: "What you give, you will receive, although it might sometimes come from the place you least expect.". We need to forget the word stranger, and to walk over the danger, as more than often the separation exists only in our mind. We should try to help someone, even if we don't know that person. We will be rewarded in a way that cannot be predicted. I will finish with Carl Jung advice: "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances, if there is any reaction, both are transformed.".

And all the separation and the barriers that we experience lately are supposed to create a shift in our thinking pattern, in order to make us more kind, more friendly, more in touch with our inner self. Because in the end, when the time is coming, we will be all alone with ourselves, and the outside world will cease to exist. It will be only us, alone, surrounded by everybody else. The connection with others is important, especially if we are not yet enlightened human beings. And, let's be honest, most of us we are not there yet.

May the light shine bright upon you, my fellow knight! Go and find your Graal!

G.

Posted via neoxian.city | The City of Neoxian