18/03/2023
“ Connection is a profound human need”
❤️❤️
Connection a profound human need. Perhaps because I know so many people who spend vast amounts of time alone and also are flourishing, I like the distinction between solitude and loneliness. Loneliness has elements of feeling abandoned, discounted, not belonging. It’s an incredibly painful, constricted state.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the term for the intermediate state between death and rebirth is known as the bardo. It is said that at first in the bardo, you may not even realize you’ve died. As Bob Thurman said to me once, “Maybe you’re at dinner and you can’t figure out why nobody seems to be passing you the butter.”
Loneliness can be a kind of bardo, a place where we feel we’ve been erased. We are stranded in some adjunct world, unacknowledged, disconnected. An extra-poignant element is how lonely we might feel even waking up next to an intimate partner, or within a family structure. We can feel lonely and emotionally abandoned even when we’re surrounded by other people. What defines loneliness is our internal degree of discomfort: we yearn for things to be other than the way they are.
Solitude, by contrast, is a state where we may be alone in terms of actual contact with others, but we have ease of heart. Many of us undertake solitude as a chance to connect with ourselves without distraction or disturbance. It can enhance our personal growth and resilience.
Excerpt from available April 11th, pre-order your copy today for two free guided meditations from the book at bit.ly/reallifebook
