Tag Archives: solitude

Oct 24 2014

The Power & Pain of Being an Introvert – TedTalk

People have me confused. You can read that in several ways but for now let’s just take it as most people think I am something I’m not.  

I was painfully shy in grade school.  So much so that my parents worried about my socialization skills.  They pushed me, encouraged me to put myself “out there” which being the obedient, wanting to please child that I was I complied.  I joined clubs, ran for office, went to dances all the while feeling like I didn’t really belong and was a bit of an imposter.

All that practice in school – putting myself “out there” has been helpful as an adult.  Most people would describe me as extroverted. But in the privacy of my own heart I’d rather be by myself. It’s simple – I NEED to be alone to regenerate my physical energy and stimulate my thinking.

I’m an introvert.  Susan Cain will explain it in this excellent TedTalk:

Watch it even if you are an extrovert it will help explain most of your friends or family members!

 

Oct 28 2011

Give Me My Alone-time

Alone-time is something I relish.  Whether it’s a factor of  my personality or the kind of work I do . . . or both . . .I’m not sure.  

All I’m sure about is I kinda like being with me.   I find myself extremely compatible and understanding!

  • The word, coined in medieval times, originally signified “a completeness in one’s singular being”.
  • In religious terminology, ‘solitude’ typically means the experience of oneness with God.
Today, alone often implies lonely, an absence of something important or essential.
Here’s what it evokes for my good friend Sharon:

A•LONE•LY

by Sharon Mills

To be a•lone is to play your music loudly or softly to please you,
to read in the family room or dance in the living room or sleep on the
couch, at noon,
to clean or not to clean,
to launder or to do homework or to exercise, or not.
to revel in the possibilities of hour, day or week.

To be lone•ly is to turn on any talk show to hear a human voice,
to sigh in the family room or cry in the living room or sleep from
boredom, at noon,
to scream or not to scream,
to be crushed under the weight of things only one cannot do.
to survey all there is to be done and conclude there’s no use.

To be a•lone is to exult in the exuberant monsoon rain storm,
to be delighted that the phone does not ring and there is no raucous
rap on the door,
to be not Netted,
to be able to think a thought through from beginning to end,
to find time to luxuriate in being you.

To be lone•ly is to hunker down with headphones to avoid summer storm,
to wish for the call of even a salesman or that a Witness would come
to the house,
to check for E-mail,
to run from your thoughts as if from a speeding freight train.
to be by yourself and not like the company.

A•lone is time to fill. Lone•ly is time to kill.
A•lone is feast. Lone•ly is famine.
A•lone is choice. Lone•ly is endurance.

I received a lot of responses on from the original post I wrote on lonely and alone

 https://judithwesterfield.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/alone-or-lonely-which-is-worse/?preview=true&preview_id=11845&preview_nonce=5e09523501

I wonder what alone means for you?