Archive for the ‘on lonliness’ Category

dealing with loneliness on the road…

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Eric, the editor of TravelBlogs.com recently posed the following prompt to a group of travel bloggers. If you’re interested, you can find the other answers in his article on, “Dealing with Loneliness on the Road.”

Here was my answer:

How do you deal with loneliness on the road?

I remember wondering about this question myself; once. And then I noticed the guy sitting next to me on the plane was reading, “The Alchemist” and I said, “Hey! That’s my favorite book!” and he said, “Yea? It inspired me to make this solo adventure to Latin America, which I’m now kind of nervous about….”

And that’s the thing about “loneliness” on the road; it dissipates as fast as you can write, “me too!” in the fog of your breath on the window plexiglas. The community of solo travellers is strong and sticky; we are like beads of mercury, ever rolling faster, and with a curiously strong drive for cohesion, towards each other. Being an introvert and independent, I actually have to concentrate on keeping my eyes low and my pace quick to find my (treasured) time alone.

In seven years of travelling, the only time I remember wishing for a little more community was in Thailand, where as a “single” it’s easy to get lost in the boat loads of honeymooners and bratpacks of recent college graduates. But if you avoid the strongholds of Club Med, you’ll quickly find the other solo traveller(s) looking for you. And this might sound strangely like dating advice, but it’s true: just follow your whim and interests; joining a language school, dropping in on a dance class or volunteering with an NGO are all INSTANT “ins” into already established communities of both locals and travellers. All you have to do is drop by the closest internet cafe and look for the board with all the activity fliers and jot down the location and time. While you’re there, ask the internet cafe if they are hiring, because a quick local job (bartending, teaching english, etc.) is another instant door to close community. And if you haven’t joined, www.CouchSurfing.com yet, you should register and build up your profile, as I’ve found some of my BEST friends in the world via this global network established JUST for the purpose of fostering intimate community and authentic connections between locals and international travellers.

And finally, “loneliness” and being “alone” are not the same; don’t come home without figuring out the difference!


Posted in books & travel recommends, on lonliness, travel tips | No Comments »

pinched but not popped

Monday, October 23rd, 2006

Journal Entry
Condom, France
(How unfortunate to have a contraceptive device named after your city!)
Mid-October

Four days ago, my brother (by blood) and my sister (by marriage) jumped off a two-car train and onto the tracks of my walking dream; hands shading the sun in scout for a sister they have heard much about but never actually seen beyond the borders of Oregon’s four corners.

I wish desperately now, that I had filmed that moment; that instant when, while their thoughts roamed only on the plains of my whereabouts, the bubble that I thought to contain my existence, despite the waking pinch, did NOT pop, and was gloriously realized, instead, to actually exist.

Suspiciously similar to the conversation had between self and subconscious the moment one becomes lucid in a sleeping dream, my mind chased its tail with the full-circle understanding; “You’re here. And I’m here. And we’re both here together. And everything else is still here….so this must be real!!!”

The only thing better than lucidly living a dream, is being able to witness with beloved company.

And for three full days, my brother and sister witnessed with me…

They met the magical cast of French cartoon-like characters, who swooped into scenes in full color with hearts equally overflowing in offers of unexplained generosity. They watched castle tops emerge without warning from behind hilltops covered in leaves caught between seasons of gold and green. They marveled at roses of every shades and all colors, that crept wildly over cobblestone on every street corner. They played twister with the language, laughed through game upon game of charades, and just shrugged or smiled at the beds of riddles left unmade. They too, were confused, by the red and white bars giving directions, that clearly take delight in dancing pilgrims off the route of their intention. They shared five-course meals with tables of fellow pilgrims, as listened to histories of enchanted towns, while locals’ cheeks turned rosy with wine. They dunked chocolate croissants into steamy mugs and spooned saucy crepes, while commenting on the absence of such luxuries in the States. They bedded down in lofty hill-top towns, in bedrooms with balconies that cast warm purple shadows over the lands just traversed. They picked plums and apples off passing orchard trees that reached out their branches and offered us Earth’s best-baked delicacies.

And when they left, a sensation that I rarely feel, completely overcame me.

Only a vague acquaintance of Loneliness, I took off my bag, sat down on it, and felt out the dimensions of this foreign emotion; its emptiness, its fullness, its presence, its absence.

Finally, I settled on the definition: “absence of presence.”

At this exact instant, two white butterflies in a tumultuous tango, mimicking (if not mocking), my own game of mental tag, swung a net and caught my attention.

As I followed their flight with my eyes, my horizons suddenly spread as I moved “out of my head” (a narrow space to live in really) and inhabited the 360° space around me instead. The sun of understanding rose as a second dawn set upon me, and at once everything awoke and started buzzing all around me. A million leaves began blowing, as the wind brushed my hair from my face, and into my ear, disclosed, at once its agreement and dissent:

“About Loneliness…” it said, “you are more right than you know.”

“For exactly as you’ve defined it — the absence of presence — it is only.”

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in Le Chemin de Saint Jacques, on lonliness, on transitions & "home" | 4 Comments »

unbiased auspices

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

An hour passes by in minutes before the stranger and I finally inhale from our excited conversation when we are alerted, via a passerby, that the bus we were waiting for has stopped running. We laugh, swap names and numbers, hug and make a tentative date for me to shadow him (as a union organizer and activist) in the near future.

The boy throwing poi in the park is the most talented I’ve ever seen spin on any of the beaches on the five continents I’ve visited. I approach him, tell him so, and we pledge to find a plot of grass and time where, as his poi-disciple, he might share a few of the secrets to his skills. Before I have a chance to do so, he salutes me with, “namaste.”

Despite my reluctance to miss a night of salsa, I ditch my dancing plans because someone whom I’ve never met (via this site) has emailed me a note with the final (of three) omens indicating that I must attend a talk that night by a Swiss mystic named Manuel Schoch at Naropa University. After the class, a student of Manuel asks me if I’ll be attending the entire weekend workshop. When I tell him I can’t afford it, he tells me to speak with the director himself who, after hearing my story, puts his arm around me and says, “You just come. And tell anyone that tries to stop you to talk to me.” On the last day of the course Manuel “reads in my aura” a very powerful secret of my self-understanding that I have always known, but only with the help of his talented fingers of insight, was plucked and brought to the front of my consciousness.

Waiting at the bus station, I am composing in my head the prior post about “loving to be alone” when a gentle man that I recognize as being somehow mentally disabled approaches me. He speech is slurred due to an illness but I know that it is not as important for me to understand as it is for me to listen. And so I give him my full eye contact and attention. I can’t comprehend most of what he says but neither do his sentences have to string together in any perfect order for me to understand that it’s a story of his illness, of his father dying, and of his brother reluctantly taking over the care for him. For some reason, his last sentence is unexplainably coherent; “No one wants to be friends with a sick man; My life is very lonely.” I immediately recognize the impeccable timing of this message. Waving goodbye to my kind messenger from my bus, I bow down my arrogance and raise my gratitude to the blessing that, in my life, loneliness is a choice.

Despite the fact that I sometimes like to deny my connection to this country, the abundance of messengers and magic that I continue to find on a daily basis confirm that I have chosen, and walk, the correct path. Although my intuition nods with unclaimed certainty that I will spend a majority of the next few decades abroad, I know that one day, as is the natural progression of any personal myth, my walk will graduate and I will end where I began. And although I am still only a freshman at the school of life, having returned “home” for a short holiday break, I have equally fresh appreciation and hope for my future courses and they wind not only “away,” but intertwine my experiences and existences of “here” and “there” until there is no distinction between the three; as is the final examination in Quality of Presence that, as a perpetual student (too), I pursue.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and MercuryFrog for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in culture, gratitude, magic & alchemy, on lonliness | No Comments »

to be made and unmade

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

“I have no desire for one life partner.”

“I feel most inspired and alive on my own.”

“I don’t believe in marriage (or any other sacrament that needs a government’s stamp of legitimacy).”

There are things that I say that often elicit gasps, hushes, disbelieving “no’s” and disapproving nods. The above statements are such.

For this reason I kept quiet for many years. I took especially serious the comment, “Oh, you’ll grow out of that.”

But you know what I’ve recently realized?

I’m not going to grow out of it; I’ve grown into knowing it; I LOVE being alone!

I love waking up in bed alone. I love walking alone. I love chasing my life path alone. I love making my self-realizations alone. I love owning my accomplishments alone. I love how open I am to all interactions when I’m alone. I love retiring and retreating alone. I love taking responsibility for all my mistakes alone. I love the communion with nature that I find when I’m alone. I love being able to choose when I don’t want to be alone. I love the appreciation for food that I have when I eat alone. I love the quality of space and silence that surround me when I’m alone. I love how sensitive I am to my sources of inspiration when I am alone. I love navigating the solitary space of meditation alone. I love choosing my adventures alone. I love the lightness of being alone. I’m closest to being the person I aspire to be when I’m alone. And I think it’s time for me to come out of the closet on my love of being alone. (Or, maybe, stay in it?)

Maybe I’m unhealthily introverted. Maybe I’m just selfish, shallow and self-absorbed. (I’ve certainly been accused.) Maybe I fear commitment and responsibility. Maybe I’m just naïve. Maybe I’m afraid of people or deep relationships. Maybe I’m avoiding pain. Maybe I’ll never know the depths of truly self-sacrificing love. Maybe I’ll change my mind when I’m old and ugly. Maybe I’m made for the monastery. Maybe I just have cold heart. Maybe. I’ve considered them all, but have decided that these are question marks I’ll take on individually if and when they snake their way into my reality. I’ve learned that dedication to a life of Presence means shelving the “maybes” to a proper place of consideration, but never as justification for a position of inaction.

But I do agree that this attitude might not be healthy if I didn’t like people. Fortunately, I really like people. (In fact it’s often for the very purpose of meeting more people that I love to be alone.) I love people! And anyone who knows me knows this. In fact, many times I have to play down just how much I like people knowing how the way I “enjoy and love” people can sometimes be misinterpreted when transposed upon the laws of love as they have been defined by the greeting card industry. Equally I feel misunderstood when my love is defined by level of attachment. I really appreciate the people in my life who know me intimately enough that I am able to confidently sign my letters with, “Not missing you, but loving you. And knowing you know the difference.”

It amazes me how taboo it is to not be seeking a life partner. It seems like this is simply an unquestionable assumption that defines life progress and accomplishment. The societal conditioning is so thick that the question never has the chance to even arise. And it took me a full quarter of my life to realize, “Wow. The last six years of a solitary life path have been a perfect combination of challenge and inspiration. I feel great right now.” (And since I judge my future to be a perfect reflection of my present), “ So why not another six years? And why not the rest of this lifetime? Just me and you Life. Why not?”

I’m not saying that I’m going to define my future (no, no, no) by this or any other expectation (especially in light of the fact I don’t know much, and what I do know is constantly being looked back upon as being stupid); only that I release another socially constructed ideal and open my life to the very real and exciting possibility of walking, and taking responsibility for, my life path on my own.

The smirk on the face of the divine is inspired by the punch line of one of life’s cutest little pranks; that the minute an individual lets go and finds and centers him/herself freestanding, people seem to suddenly flock to that person. This just makes sense; that people love the essence and lightness of unburdened being and are attracted to those who internally and independently generate (and share) their own energy without dependency or borrowing. So while the advice of, “Find yourself, and then find another,” has a tone of truth, I’d also chime in with, “But if you find your relationship with life a challenging and exciting enough match of wit and emotion, then consider making a commitment to that partnership.”

As for love, I don’t know why, but I think I do feel it — not better or worse — but differently than the majority. Although it rationally makes sense to me; intuitively I simply can not define love by level of attachment, physical presence or time. I have felt the depths of my love plunge when looking into the eyes of people whose names I don’t know. And I’m actually scared by how my love does not flinch at the absence, departure and even decease of those I’ve loved for years. Perhaps it’s because I feel hardly constrained to this one little lifetime; that I’m confident and comforted by the opportunity of many more to reunite and exchange again. Even my romances I take on like sandcastles; mythical, magical little creations to be made with playful aim, but without purpose, and in full blessed consciousness of the crashing waves to which we will inevitably surrender our foundation for a fresh slate; on which we can begin again. And aren’t the waves benevolent? For what they know (but a truth which we often desperately resist), is that there is little joy in a dry and standing sandcastle. The point of a sandcastle is to be made and unmade. And a divine plan indeed has been devised to make this life a colliding and cascading collage of exactly such endless opportunities.

But enough of my rant and ramble; Rumi said it all better in eight little words;

“No better love than love with no object.”

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and MercuryFrog for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in on lonliness, on love, single/white/female, travel philosophy | No Comments »