Alone, in the midst of plenty.

Nawar Kamona
Nov 6 · 6 min read

The art of being, without the need to be doing.

Have you ever sat by yourself, without involunatrily shuffling through your phone for no aparent reason? I tried. Or have you put on a song in the background just because it’s a mood, simply stealing away from your own mood? Or have you given your full attention to that podcast, that you hoped to spark the motivation that you desperately needed?

What about finally resorting to reading the book that has been sitting and staring at you for more than a year now. That same book that you have told all your friends you were still reading, a year later.

Why do we do all of those things when we are alone?

Have you been able to sit alone without reaching for food? I mean, to the point of emptiness that it resembles the hunger for any food.

Have you sat alone without mindlessly opening the fridge, then the cupboard then switching over to your phone, to go on amazon or deliveroo because; why wouldn’t you stare at an array of endless possibilities and alternatives? We are saturated with options, and those options empty us even further.

Yet, we are so good at neglecting and avoiding ourselves in the making.

Society drenched us with the constant requirement to be performing, defeating, gaining, waiting, listening, talking, speaking winning, achieving, obtaining, receiving and doing something, anything especially reacting.

Now, I am not undermining that these things are not productive and I applaud you and strive to be productive myself. But, anyways I haven’t stopped there so if you may please bare with me… I wouldnt want us to not consider the TV noise playing in the background lightly speaking to you, but in the other room.

The problem I have with the list above, is not what you do, it is the reason of why you do it. And if you constantly find yourself in avoidance. What are you escaping from if you constantly find yourself avoiding and doing?

Have you willingly sat with yourself attending to your own thoughts without having to terminate them like the plaque with a burger, a phone call or Netflix.

Have you sat so deep with yourself that you felt extremely discouraged, almost dejected and uncomfortable that the endless possibilities in your mind, alone lead to no place to escape. Only because you surrendered to your loneliness.

My question that im trying to get at is… Have you been with yourself without doing absoutely anything but breathe? Have you been able to just be?

Would I be dissapointing you if I told you that there was no pill for happiness? Or, that the medicine for happiness solely lied between connection with yourself and perhaps even more the person you are sitting next to. And for happiness to arrive, we would have to be in a state of being rather than doing.

I was sitting alone on a Thursday night, truth be told I sit alone most nights and most days. Nonetheless, this night was different as it was disconnecting for me. I was in a bar in Notting hill and I was the only person who wasn’t on their phone. I had actually switched my phone off that night. It was one of those days where I didn’t know how to explain how I felt and I wasn’t certain anybody else would decipher and as typical of me, I escaped it. Not a great habit. But that’s what happened. Allow me to continue, the isolating part of that Thursday night, was that the people I was observing were smiling, laughing but with a screen, one was weeping, but with a screen, to a screen in her left hand.

One was exchanging thoughts with a friend, similarly at a screen too, one was eating but with a screen in her hand. And I was watching.

What is this constant need for us to be somewhere else?

Had I not felt missunderstood that day, would I have drank my tea with a screen in my hand? Missing the opportunity to connect to what lived around me? Research shows us and we ourselves, we have never felt so virtually connected in the history of life. Yet, why is loneliness rising more than ever. Technologies that are connecting us to each other, is separating our tangible connectivness to one another.

For example;

To feel alone is not that uncommon, it is a simple human situation but, then again loneliness is subjective.

Loneliness can be an interesting learning experience we experience for a day or a week after a long solo trip. Where your alone-ness sparks an interest in your true core self. Bringing up your shadows and reflecting your truths, whilst you happily and joyfully attend to your solitude and withdrawal. That feeling where you connect to the one-ness you have reached and gained from this positive experience. In that very moment of discovery, this is your choice of loneliness and being alone.

OR

You can be surrounded by a crowded environment with friends, over dinner, noise celebrating a party. Or you could be lying in bed wrapped in the arms of your partner.Or having breakfast with your big family and still feel so lonely to the pit of your soul isolated from your thoughts, having numbing consequences.

Alternatively,

you can be by yourself, at the end of the world hours time zones and miles away from any person or creature. And still feel solitude, content, comfortable, relaxed and very much connected to yourself hence, connected to the environment around you.

But, what if we flipped that switch and that loneliness flows and swims within you for a year.

Is loneliness triggered by the way we react to it?

Or perhaps, it is a transitional lonely thought that one sits with, lingering. Loneliness can be tied to a melancholic mood where you feel as though the strings of your heart, almost resemble the strings of a violin. But rather, those strings are connected to the soles of your feet inhibiting all functional movement. And as much as you crave to leap and connect, you have learnt how to be alone for far too long, in that 1 year. We’ve all been there. I have, today. To crave retreating back to our safe space at home, our room our bed our sanctuary or even our vacuum.

Crave to be away from connection to retrieve back into our cave?

If we flashback to millions of years ago, throughout evolution, we were creatures of habit. Us, human creatures hunted and searched for connection as the means for survival and for connectedness was our medicine. Because without this connection , there would be no man in a cave and no food to eat, therefore, no survival.

Yet I question, is loneliness a genetic deficiency? Or a social deficiency?

It’s interesting, I write this with a red, circular, warning sign. Almost like a STOP?

Because, loneliness strikes the same warning of which a mother is notified that her baby is in danger, that gut feeling, a cautious sign, a symptom and indicator of something. With a hidden aetiology, and if you listen closely it is like the dryness of thirst, the emptiness of hunger, and the darkness that we recognize in fear. It is this sign that urges us to hunt and chase for our vastly fundamental basic aid, human connection.

But what if we don’t listen? and I urge you to listen, as I didnt, for a long time. And as sincere and exposed as the sand cries for water in deficiency in a drought. I cry to reach out to you to notify you and pull up a mirror of what is the cost of your loneliness to you today?

Nawar Kamona

Written by

Artist, chronic illness academic researcher, naturopath, nutritionist, Recovering student, non diet advocator and an average fish in the sea.

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