Being alone can be a petrifying, unfamiliar and intimidating thought for most.

So many people are afraid to be alone. Afraid to be single because they feel that it makes them less than others. They are craving a love, which we all do-innately—it is what we were designed to do. Without it, they feel as though they are living an incomplete existence.

Placing our need for happiness on another soul is the perfect equation for disappointment and discontent. We can never be truly happy with another soul if we are not first happy with our own heart and soul, all alone, fighting a one man/woman battle.

One. There are songs forcing the thought that “One is the loneliest number” into our easily subjective brains. Really? I’ve found that one is the perfect numerical power to finding out all there is to know about myself. Silence breeds knowledge. And complete and utter silence takes place when there is one heart beating in the woods.

I spent the majority of my first quarter of life being in some kind of “relationship.”

I never fully experienced living alone, eating alone, sleeping alone or having someone to lean on when the times got hard.

Then I spent two solid years of not being in a relationship and that was the most amazing two years I could have ever dreamt of. I learned so much about who I am as a person, and what it is I truly want in life, without the push to be something I’m not—because that is the desire of someone else.

I learned that I can do anything, on my own, without someone else. How liberating!

I refused to settle, just to avoid loneliness.

I sat in loneliness and let it steep in my existence.

In the passing of those 300 moons, I came to understand what it took for me to love, what I love, how I love, what made me tick, what made me breathe and what soothes my soul in trying times. I was an entirely liberated and free woman. I would have never learned these things if I continued searching and combing through each heart that was presented to me.

Do not settle for love.

Do not love unless it is a mad passionate extraordinary love. Let it shake up your world. Let it make you grow. Let it lead you to adventures. Let it create the exploration of yourself.

While you are sitting in loneliness, try (key word try), to be celibate—sex can complicate things.

The dance of two souls is just that: you are seeing the most vulnerable and raw part of a person when you go to bed with them. The absence of physical desire makes you appreciate the physicality of your future relations and you can learn what you really want in another. What really turns you on, off and just makes your entire existence go so crazy that you must have that person for eternity.

So…

Surround yourself with amazing friends. You are the company in which you keep.

Eat bountiful amounts of chocolate.

Date—yourself. Learn how to take yourself out.

Learn to love yourself and the abundance and pure love will find it’s way to your heart.

Listen to your heart. If it doesn’t feel right—it’s not.

And be content in sitting with your own thoughts and beat of your heart.

You will find what makes your soul sing.

Trust in the Universe.

~

Relephant:

How To Be Alone.

I Want To Go To Bed Alone.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

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Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Chiara Cremaschi/Flickr