Tag: Life

An Ode to Solitude

Photo by Edu Carvalho on Pexels.com

As a single, mid-30-year-old, I have given solitude enough chance to say now with confidence that – it is grossly underrated.

Solitude is peaceful,
solitude is kind,
solitude can be friendly
and as intoxicating as wine.

Most will never know because the general perception of solitude is not appealing. Even a quick image search on solitude will display an array of dark, gloomy, and depressed visuals. I had to refine my search to “happy single woman” to get the picture above.

No one wants to give solitude a chance. What we truly are scared of is its notorious doppelganger – loneliness. They both might look the same, but are as different as chalk and cheese.

We are afraid of solitude because there is this constant expectation, from society and ourselves included, to find that perfect partner. You need to find “The One”, only then are you deemed “complete”. Your life is worthless otherwise. I wonder who was the first person who fed this thought into our minds.

The truth is – we can feel complete in so many different ways. Through our platonic friendships, activities, hobbies, work, parents, extended family. But we choose to feel complete only with a partner. Trying to convince ourselves we are not whole on our own.

For the longest time, I wanted to get married, follow the usual societal norms. But in my mind, I would question my motive behind it. Did I want to get married? Or was I interested in getting married because that’s what everyone does? I feel it was the latter. I just wanted to follow the rules set by society for a woman – work, get married before 30, and have children. It took one marriage to make me realize, maybe the time for me was not right back then. I dived into it way too early. Primarily because of pressure. Partly because of confusion.

I hope a day comes when solitude isn’t mistaken for loneliness. They are poles apart. One gives you freedom, the other pain. One gives you peace, the other trauma. One gives you clarity, the other makes you commit blunders out of impatience.

I hope one day, solitude, my sweet misunderstood friend, people give you a fair chance. Find out for themselves that you are not so bad, after all.

An Ode to Unexplained Feelings

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Is it not unsettling that what we feel can never be expressed entirely with words?

Imagine feeling the whole world, and when you express it, it turns out less than whole – as small, grainy and flighty as sand. Most of the finest specks, lost in translation.

We are only subjected to someone’s surface-level emotions. The tip of an iceberg. Never truly getting to experience the depths.

People often say if given a superpower, they would like to read other’s minds. But how reliable are those thoughts? They can be inaccurate and flippant. You might feel pain, but the comments flaring in your mind might be that of anger. You might feel happiness, but your thoughts could counter with a cynical “Is this too good to be true?” Thoughts can be contradicting, untrue and a spoilsport. Feelings, though – they are as true as they can get.

I would rather feel what people are feeling – in its entirety. Feelings won’t lie even if you desperately wish they would. What we feel inside is the purest, most concentrated form of emotion. When we try to assemble our feelings into words, we dilute the essence by half. When we let it out, we lose more, depending on how skilled you are with the spoken language. Then it is up to the recipient to preserve the remaining as is or interpret it in a totally different way. A game of Chinese Whispers. This is why we are often left stunned, when a loved one misunderstands you, because what you feel is totally different from what they have interpreted it to be. Words can be beautiful but they are equally constricting.

I sometimes wonder if something like an emotion tester (let’s call it a feel-o-meter) would have made us less judgmental and more compassionate. A device that can measure the intensity of someone’s emotions.

  • To appreciate those who stay quiet but are filled up to the brim with love.
  • To recognize those who sweet talk but feel nothing.
  • To understand that someone’s pain is just that – pain, and nothing else – no manipulation, no faking involved.
  • To understand someone’s anger is more than just anger – it is a deep-rooted sadness.
  • To understand that someone’s inability to express is not apathy but an internal struggle with overwhelming emotions.

People mostly use their reckless judgment to analyze whether someone is being genuine or not.

  • We could be crying, but someone would say “Stop acting”
  • We could be hurt, but people would say “You are overreacting”
  • We could genuinely be sorry but someone would say “You don’t mean it”

We make up these little disapproving stories in our mind about a person, to suit our whims and fancies, without really knowing the truth. There is so much time wasted in this period between judgment and knowing. And who is to blame? Us for being unable to reveal our feelings in its totality, or them for not seeing our unadulterated feelings?