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Befriend Loneliness—

don’t push it away with new “love” or smother it in entertainment or distract it with technology. 

For in so doing we shall befriend ourselves—and then we will never again be truly lonely.

Lonely? Don’t fill the space. Breathe the cold, sweet air in deeply.

As some have said, “Love isn’t reserved for romance alone.”

“Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly.
let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
as few human or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes so soft
my voice so tender
my need of god
absolutely clear.”
~ Hafiz

For more: Love is Selfish. And, The Buddhist View of Loneliness as a Good Thing.

~

Hafiz poems and excerpts are from Daniel Ladinsky’s  Penguin publications The Gift, Poems by Hafiz © copyright 1999, and I Heard God Laughing, Poems of Hope and Joy © copyright 1996 & 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.