Next Time You Feel Lonely, Remember This Simple (But Important) Truth

Loneliness is something I think a lot of us try to evade. We run from it, avoid it, mask it, and do anything in our power to not feel it. But what if I told you that this wasn’t a feeling to get rid of but to wholeheartedly embrace as a part of your human experience?

Let me explain what I mean by this…

I believe that as humans we hold two deeply ingrained longings within us: to belong and to be free. And the feeling of loneliness is inevitably synched in between them both.

To belong is where we look for our similarities, our sameness. It’s where we long to be like one another. But to be free is where we search for our individuality and our own unique expression. It’s where we seek to be heard and seen as our distinctive self. And life often takes us on a great quest to find our freedom— we travel, we read, we try new things. We go into the world seeking to uncover what makes us uniquely us and in the midst of that journey our other ingrained longing comes knocking on the door. Through a distinct feeling of, yes, loneliness.

One of my favorite writers, John O’Donohue, said this perfectly, “…each human mind is powerfully conscious of its own difference; it has an intimate and unbreakable relationship with its own difference. This is what makes human individuality journey out of itself to explore and engage others; but it is also what makes each of us so deeply aware of our aloneness.”

It is both our greatest discovery and our greatest fear wrapped into one: that we might be so uncharacteristically unique.

I think this is a beautiful way to view the feeling of loneliness when it makes its way into your heart. To sit in the reminder and truth that to be human is intrinsically lonely and yet irrevocably connected. We are both the same as one another yet miles apart with differences. To accept and see this is to unmask the truth of what loneliness is telling us: that the human experience is wrapped in paradoxical experiences—and we can hold and tend to them both with the same loving care. This is being human.

We can feel both lonely and connected, expansive and small. We can honor them both.

Here’s a practice to do just that next time loneliness arises:

Welcome it. One of my favorite mindfulness practices to use with emotions that we naturally want to push away is to instead gently whisper to yourself, “This belongs too.” When you do this, it softens your stance towards the emotions that are nudging at your heart. It releases any resistance you might have the urge to embody and helps you to acknowledge and accept this inherently imperfect experience of being human.

Meet the space beyond your understanding. Our minds can often try to convince us that we must understand what’s happening at all times. This is not true, and leads to a life that resides primarily in the mind and out of reach from the present moment. At any time you have the power and ability to let go. When you lean into the space that is beyond your understanding, you open yourself up to more possibilities. This is where breakthrough happens. And with loneliness this looks like meeting that space that goes beyond how you categorize and understand this particular emotion—leaning into the greater mystery of all things and knowing that there is something far greater at work here within the loneliness too.

Write out your uniqueness. When we notice our own uniqueness, it can help us to notice others’ uniqueness too. This leads to more acceptance of individuality, which moves our focus from viewing differences through a lens of negativity and divide, into a lens of beauty and celebration. Honoring our individual experiences as a collective brings unity, which evokes both belonging and freedom at the same time.

It isn’t about getting rid of loneliness, but learning to embrace what it’s telling you about who you truly are. You were born to both belong and to be free!