Solitude
Autor: João | Publicado: 2011-01-02T17:10:00-08:00

HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya DavisIf you are at first lonely,   be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you  weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone  once you're embracing it.We could start with the acceptable  places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall  and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay  there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not  supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.The  lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees  who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they --  like you -- will be alone.Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.When  you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for  dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less  intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the  whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at  full tables will wish they were where you were.Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.And  then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand  on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more  and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're  probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human  intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all,  gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of  perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a  brook of blessings.Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.Go  to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to  talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence  if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the  conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never  happened had you not been there by yourselfSociety is afraid of  alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people  must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely  is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if  you make it.You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold  hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless  quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you  translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it  is just kept.Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps  all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning  were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your  head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.It's okay if no  one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same  synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things  interesting lifes magic  things in reach.And it doesn't mean  you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the  perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the  effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that  needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or  religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed itIf your heart is bleeding make the best of itThere is heat in freezing, be a testament.Texto: Tanya DavisVideo: Andrea Dorfman