We may know that time alone and loneliness sometimes live side by side. We may be able to catch ourselves in the moment when we purposefully take time to be alone slipping toward loneliness. We may be able to watch it happen and understand something about how this can happen for us in particular. And we may find even in ourselves feeling lonely in our aloneness in really different ways from moment to moment, day to day, and year to year. We may take space emotionally in a conversation, stop speaking, focus on our own feelings, and suddenly while standing nearby people we are actively connected to, feel lonely and disconnected. We may take physical space to do something we love to do like go for a hike or read a book and end up fearing what we're missing out on in other spaces that other people are doing together. We may simply find ourselves feeling loneliness in our existence as a network of beings who are in a real way also always alone. And we may therefore be able to see how loneliness, too, is part of life, and in a way begin to befriend our own tendencies toward the shadow of our existential aloneness. What is one thing you tell your loneliness when it shows up in you?
[image description: A solemn-looking heart pauses alone in a field with a bright sunset in the background. The heart sighs and its shadow reads, "lonely."]
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