Coming Home to Ourselves
On Community, Loneliness and Belonging
Little acts of kindness aren’t so small after all
I arrived home yesterday to find a spring posy and a word of gratitude on my doorstep. It brought such joy to my heart, I thought to share it with you all incase you decide to spread some spring joy this weekend with a small act of kindness. The thing about kindness is that it has a wonderful habit of spreading. Continue the ripple.
Contradictions
I’ve noticed a contradiction, one of many I’m sure, that live within me. This particular contradiction weaves itself between community, solitude and belonging.
Community can be a powerful and supportive thing, but, the times I feel most alone and like I don’t belong are often when I’m part of a group. Inevitably, when the feelings of shyness and skin crawling discomfort become too much to bare, I retreat to my solitude, and things feel better for a time.
But I know deep down, this peaceful seeming solitude is not a result of a greater sense of belonging to myself, it’s simply a break from the uprising bubbles of insecurity stirred up by being in community.
In fact, most of the time I spend alone, I spend being busy. I’m good at ‘productive’, it’s less vulnerable and our society approves of it. It’s a win-win, or a lose-lose depending on how you look at it. I keep moving, keep doing, keep listening, keep creating, keep anything really to continue drowning the noise of my fizzing mind whilst swimming just above the feelings I don’t want to feel. The one problem with this method is that you can’t ever stop - it’s sink or swim baby! The other is that I being to feel like I can’t trust myself, I tell myself that parts of me (like the fizzy mind and big emotions) aren’t safe - I abandon parts of myself.
The crux of it
What if we could find a sense of belonging in our own solitude? What if, deep down, under the surface layers of thoughts and feelings, there exists a welcoming shelter, instead of the deep dark abyss I’ve long imagined.
I happened across this paragraph recently (yes, I know, it’s from John O’Donohue, again!):
“When you inhabit your solitude fully and experience its outer extremes of isolation and abandonment, you will find at its heart there is neither loneliness nor emptiness, but intimacy and shelter. In your solitude you are frequently nearer to the heart of belonging and kinship than you are in your social life or public world…Ironically, your trust in your inner belonging radically alters your outer belonging. Unless you find belonging in your solitude, your external longing remains needy and driven.” - J O’Donohue
A wonderful welcome within
This year is an adventure of coming home to myself. You’re very welcome to join me, there’ll be plenty of opportunities along the way.
How hard can it be? Gulp.
“We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating - lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.” - Eckhart Tolle
