Today, while being alone at home the whole day, I was thinking about the difference in meanings of two words:" lonely" & "solitude".Even though more than often we think both are same, but these two words have seemingly vast implications in life.
Solitude helps us to know ourselves better which we can never do when we are surrounded by people.Not only ourselves, it helps us to analyze our life, our friends, it helps us to focus on what is important and what lies ahead. Yes, it's true sometimes it brings us face to face with some harsh realities which we might have condoned when we are with others always.Solitude is important to retrospect, to revise our life, to set our priorities straight, to understand people better, to differentiate between fake and real, to know our inner strengths, fears, apprehensions or may I say to know ourselves better.Solitude brings clarity in thoughts, circumstances and perspectives. It is the quintessential "me" time.
But being lonely is completely different. The feeling of being lonely is fearsome.It makes us weak and vulnerable even to little indifference. When we are lonely, we are not clear in our thoughts.We can be in middle of a party and still be lonely.Being lonely is being isolated, not making connect to people. Yes at some point in life we all feel lonely. We feel as if no one in the world understands us, as if everybody is busy in their own world and nobody cares to bother about us. But if we continue to nurture this feeling, it makes our life miserable.We need to come out of the feeling and get practical.It's true there is no such thing as "free lunch" in the world. People will not care about you when you are alone, but they will care about you when they are alone....such is the way of life and if we can accept this we will never be lonely again.And when we stop being lonely, the time we spend alone transforms into "solitude" !!
