Category: LONELINESS & SOLITUDE

  • There can be no final solution to our loneliness in this life.  No amount of partying and drinking, pleasure and travel, fame and fortune, success or creativity, indeed no amount of genuine human love and affection, can ever fully take our loneliness away.

    —Ronald Rolheiser, The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness

  • “The Hebrew scriptures see sin as the prime alienator. 1 In their view of things, frequently when we find ourselves lonely, it is because of sin: our sin, other’s sin, or the sinful condition of the human race. Sin, since it helps destroy love and trust that can bind us together and replaces them with selfishness and distrust that help drive us apart, perhaps more than any other single force serves to alienate us from each other. Sin causes loneliness. The Hebrew scriptures see this as happening in several ways. First of all, sin alienates because it destroys our proper harmony with God. Loneliness results because we are now not in proper relationship with what is fully real. Moreover, this state will inevitably destroy the proper harmony and relationships we have with each other, as well, for when we are out of tune with God, we are by that same fact out of tune with others. No one can break the first three commandments and hope to keep the other seven. In this sense, sin of all kinds makes for loneliness.”

    —Ronald Rolheiser, The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness

  • “Sometimes loneliness has led us to new heights of creativity, and sometimes it has led us to drugs, alcohol, and emotional paralysis; sometimes it has led us to the true encounter of love and authentic sexuality, sometimes it has led us into dehumanizing relationships and destructive sexuality; sometimes it has moved us to a greater depth of openness toward God and others, to fuller life, and sometimes it has led us to jump off bridges, to end life; sometimes it has given us a glimpse of heaven, sometimes it has given us a glimpse of hell; sometimes it has made the human spirit, sometimes it has broken it; always has it affected it.  For loneliness is one of the deepest, most universal, and most profound experiences that we have.”

    —Ronald Rolheiser,The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness

  • Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.

    —rupi kaur

  • “Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts, rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all the pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.”

    (via heartsinrevolt)

  • “I know of no more potent killer than isolationism.  There is no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than isolation of you from me and us from them.  It has been shown to be a central agent in the etiology of depression, paranoia, murder, schizophrenia, rape, suicide, and a mass and a wide variety of disease states.”

    —Dr. Philip Zambardo, Stanford University

  • “I think a person needs to learn from childhood to find himself alone. It means to not be bored when you’re by yourself, because a person who finds himself bored when alone – as it seems to me – is in danger.”

    —Andrei Tarkovsky, A Poet in the Cinema

  • “Your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.”

    —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  • We may not be aware of it, but we always have a chair pulled out for the surprising demands of our hearts. Happiness, loneliness, fear, sadness, anger – each comes as an unexpected guest. Each moment contains a new arrival. Instead of turning them away, according to the Sufi poet Rumi, we should extend our hospitality: “Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

    When unpleasant forces enter our lives, we often shut them out. When we send these forces away, we have lost an important chance to grow. Instead, we should admit them as guests to our table, because they can teach us how to become more conscious human beings. When we welcome, entertain, feed, and listen to our unanticipated emotions, we become better at regulating and respecting our feelings, and we aid ourselves in development as people.

    Welcome the Unexpected

  • “There exists only one aloneness, and it is great, and it is not easy to bear. To nearly everyone come those hours that we would gladly exchange for any cheap or even the most banal camaraderie, for even the slightest inclination to choose the second-best or the most unworthy thing. But perhaps it is exactly in those hours when aloneness can flourish.”

    —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet