Conscious Inklings Blog. IDEAS, INSIGHTS & INK-SPIRATION. / peace

I used to have this crazy recurring nightmare in which I would awaken from sleep to find that I was the last person left in the world.  I would run through the streets, searching shops and homes, trying to find out where everyone had gone, but as I ran, I realized that I was completely alone.  It was terrifying.

I couldn’t have imagined anything worse.  To never be able to share things with other people, to never be able to connect

 

with another person again was a completely horrifying idea.  Without those things, I can’t imagine that life would hold anywhere near as much joy or laughter.

The funny thing is that the chance of there being a total apocalypse, while not completely impossible, is pretty unlikely, and it’s even more unlikely that if all human life suddenly ceased to exist, I would somehow be the only one to survive.  So why, even after waking, did this dream send shivers of panic through me?  Why did this dream continue to plague me night after night?

For much of my life, I have had a very hard time being alone.  Growing up, it seemed I was always with other people, whether it was my sister or my friend next door.  Even throughout college, I often slept over at friends’ houses because I never wanted to go home.  I never wanted to be alone.  I think, somewhere along the way, I developed this idea that if I was alone, I would feel lonely, and who wants to feel that?

In recent years though, various life circumstances have led me to spend a lot more time by myself and, quite unexpectedly, I have come to appreciate time spent in my own company.  I actually can’t even remember the last time I had the apocalyptic nightmare and I think the reason is that I finally shone a light under the bed where the monster was supposed to be hiding and found that the fear was not based in anything true.  Rather than finding loneliness in my time away from others, I found a greater sense of intimacy with myself, an ability to be more authentic, and a deeper sense of peace

Not only did my experience of being alone shift,

but the way that I approach my time with others has changed as well.  While I certainly still love to meet new people and to spend time with my friends and family, I don’t feel such a strong need to constantly surround myself with others.  This allows me to be more thoughtful about the ways that I share my time with the people in my life and leads me to be so much more grateful for the moments I share with them, the learning that can come out of each experience, and the opportunities I have to share myself and my gifts with the people around me.  I am more present for each moment, and as a result, the sense of connectedness I gain through these experiences is so much more profound.

Since I have started being alone more, the interactions I do have with other people seem to carry more weight, and I find that I am more aware of the ways I interact with people.  The exchange with the person ringing me up in the store, making eye contact with someone I pass on the street, even conversations with people that I still speak to regularly, but much less frequently than I used to, become illuminated and I feel more attuned to the impact we have on each other and the importance of taking every opportunity to share positivity and love with others.

Another thing that I have become more attuned to is the way that loneliness does not really result from being away from others.  Loneliness can strike whether you are living a solitary life on a mountaintop or spending 24 hours a day, seven days a week surrounded by people, because loneliness is not so much a result of being physically alone.  Loneliness is the result of an emotional sense of being alone, a sense of disconnectedness, and the great thing about that is that is that it really is only a feeling.  The truth

is that we are all connected in infinite ways.  We are never truly alone, well, unless of course there actually is an apocalypse, but even then, we can connect with all the love

that we have shared, the memories of everyone who has touched our lives, and be filled up with the beauty and joy of these experiences.  We always have that choice; so as long as we choose to stay conscious of that connectedness, there may be times in life where we find that we must be alone, loneliness is always optional.

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That’s the funny thing about life though—you can ignore and resist the clues and messages all you want, but life will keep putting circumstances in front of you that give you the opportunity to learn the lesson.

Last week I made the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco for a dear friend’s wedding.  I have made this drive so many times before. 380 miles.  Hours of straight, flat road.  In the past, it was always a game: fly as fast as you can up the highway without getting caught.  For most of the drive, the speed limit is 75 MPH, but when you have hundreds of miles of open road stretching out in front of you and a horizon that seems to recede endlessly into the distance, even 90 MPH seems painfully slow.

I would drive as fast as my conscience could stand, alternating between staring at the horizon, wishing to be there, and neurotically checking my rear view mirror for black and white cars with blue and red lights.  The whole time, I would wish for it to be over.  I would wish for the hours to go by quickly.  I would wish hours of my life away.

But this time was different.  It had been years since I had last made this drive, and so many things about my perspective had shifted since then.  Despite all of the exciting things that awaited me in San Francisco and all of the people that I couldn’t wait to see, I set out on this trip with the conscious intention to remain patient, to not rush through this journey, these six hours of my life. I set an intention to be present.

The funny thing is, the trip went by faster this way.  It still took me the same amount of time, but I allowed myself to be absorbed in the experience, rather than fighting it.  Instead of constantly checking my clock and my mileage, calculating how much longer it would take at my current speed, I stayed present with the journey.

I noticed the beauty of the scenery; I enjoyed the peacefulness of the solitude and the singular task in front of me, just to drive. I had expected to feel frustration, but instead I felt gratitude.  Gratitude for the opportunity to see my friends and be with them for this important moment in their lives.  Gratitude for the opportunity to take a vacation from work, for the opportunity to travel to a city that I have always loved.  I recognized how different this experience was and the ways I have changed, become a little more peaceful and aware, and I was grateful for that, too.  Even the little things, the lambs frolicking in the open pastures along the highway and the children waving and giggling from their backseat window as they passed me, brought me so much joy.

I wondered why I had resisted this experience in the past.  I had spent so much time staring at the horizon, wishing to already be there.  I had missed everything that was right here.  I know I have done and continue to do this in so many areas of my life, particularly in my career and romantic life.  I have this idea that somewhere, over there on the horizon, things will be better.  Once I have the career of my dreams, the relationship I have always wanted…maybe once I have the perfect body or have reached some sort of nirvana where all of the aspects of myself that I consider flawed have melted away, I will float through life in a state of permanent bliss.

But this is it. This is where bliss happens.  Right here.  Not over there somewhere, out on a horizon that will probably always elude me, because, that’s what horizons do.  They are only illusions.  Just like my eyes perceive an endpoint to the landscape in front of me, my mind creates some sort of finish line in my life, but neither is real.  Once I reach the farthest point that I can see right now, there will be a new horizon, just as far away.  And even if I do achieve my dream career, my ideal body, and find the perfect relationship, my perspective will have changed along the way and there will be new things to attain, new endpoints in the distance.  So, for now, I will enjoy the scenery wherever I am at.  I will notice the beauty all around me, the giggling children, and the lambs frolicking in the open pastures.  After all, the grass is pretty green right here.

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