Seeking solitude…
This summer I made the decision to take a break from everything going on in my life to take a breather and unclutter my life. I put graduation on hold and moved to a new city to start a brand new life! It is exciting, to say the least, but it has also turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life so far (the best being saying YES to the to-be-hubby!!)
The reasons for my statement above are manifold. Taking time off from school has given me a ton of time to do stuff I didn’t have the time to do in the last 2 years – travel, write, read, think and just be by myself – to borrow a cliché, it has allowed me to stop and smell the roses! Despite how corny that sounds, it is actually a very important thing to do. Many times, we are so caught up with our routine that we fail to appreciate the finer details of our lives!
I recently read an article about the importance of seeking solitude in this day and age where, as the author points out “instead of having real conversations & social interactions, people are just filling up their alone time with noise“. How true! (Its an old article, but it still makes some good points). From the time we wake up to the time we sleep, we spend almost every moment interacting with different people – via email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, you name it! In an attempt to keep up with our online lives, we end up not giving ourselves the alone time that we really need.
But what is the point of seeking solitude, you ask? I don’t really know the right answer to that. But I’ve found that when I cut myself off from everything, even if that is only for a few minutes or hours a day and just be by myself, it makes a huge difference to me. It helps bring clarity to my thoughts and leaves me much less restless than I would be otherwise. Its also a great way to boost my productivity. I end up finishing projects much faster, when I make up my mind to not constantly check for new email or status updates. It takes a lot of willpower to not do things that have become habits now, but I still try and mostly succeed!
For me, some of the best ways to find solitude are to read and write. Reading has always been a great escape for me, even when I was a little kid, I spent hours reading when other kids played outside. My parents almost thought that I was very anti-social, but I’m not. Being choosy with your interactions, isn’t the same as being anti-social, right? Writing is something I picked up much later in my life. I mostly write for myself – to keep myself motivated and to help me put my thoughts on paper so that they seem more realistic! These two still remain hobbies that I immensely enjoy. Another thing that has really helped me is not having a TV! Seriously, the amount of time you can spend watching TV is phenomenal, but what do we achieve out of it (the exceptions being news, I guess! Even that is so repetitive these days!)
Sometimes I contradict myself though. I know how important it is to stay connected these days and I do a fairly good job of that. What I’m trying to say is that both these aspects i.e. staying connected and making time for oneself are two sides of the same coin and knowing how to balance these two is fairly important to me!
Ok, I really don’t know where I was going with this. Just consider this my random brainfart for the day.
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