OUT OF REACH. BACK TO SELF_
THE NEED TO BE ALONE WITH YOURSELF
Being constantly reachable can sometimes blur what, within us, is still waiting to be heard.
This article explores chosen solitude not as an escape, but as a space to step back, allowing us to return to others without feeling completely drained.
A moment of chosen solitude.
Mental Overload
We live surrounded by voices.
The voices of loved ones, work, messages and all the people we try to be there for. Each one asks for an answer, a reaction or our attention.
This social overload does not mean that we love others any less. It appears when we have spent so much time responding that we no longer quite know what, within us, is still waiting to be heard.
Continuing to talk is no longer enough to sustain the connection.
Sometimes, we have to interrupt it.
Finding Your Own Way to Be Alone
There is no single right way to find your way back to yourself.
Some people need to stop. To read on the sofa, play a video game or have tea on the terrace. For a while, nothing needs to be explained or shared.
Others need to move. To run, walk through a forest, climb a mountain.
The body keeps moving and the thoughts gradually stop jostling one another.
Others still look for a horizon. A deserted beach, a road where they can sing too loudly, a sunset before which the tears come without asking permission.
Sometimes, we need to go farther away. To travel alone, walk through an unfamiliar city and become, for a few hours, someone no one knows yet.
The activity matters less than what it suspends: the need to be available, understandable and constantly turned outward.
On one condition, however: that we do not turn this solitude into another performance.
The book does not need to be finished.
The run recorded.
The hike posted.
The trip made productive.
Otherwise, the world comes in with us again.
Returning
Chosen solitude does not solve everything. It simply creates an interval in which our own experience can finally catch up with us.
We need other people. Their presence, their words and their affection. But being continuously connected can eventually make us absent, even when we are still there.
Taking some distance, then, is not always abandoning others.
Sometimes, it is a way to avoid returning to them entirely emptied of ourselves.
Because the most beautiful reason to be alone with ourselves is not to learn to live without anyone.
It is to make sure that, when we return to those we love, there is still someone within us to meet them.
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