My Loneliness

Here is what Pema Chodron says about Loneliness: Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we rest in the middle of it, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a cooling loneliness that turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.

Almost every day, I seek escape, consolation, protection from my loneliness. I feel it approaching even before it is in sight, like the hot tendrils of headache before the pain. Daily, I seek a savior to rescue me from this dark hole. To my savior I say, “This is your fault that I am lonely. If only you could provide me with “enough” then I would not hunger so.”

Tuesday I found myself in a hotel lobby after the conference with that familiar smell of loneliness in the air. My loneliness likes to visit me when I am alone in hotels. I had been inside a windowless space for hours so went for a walk in the warm sun by the river. A short ways down the trail there was a playground and a sandy place where children and their caregivers feed bread to geese, ducks and gulls. I sat in the bright warm sun so unusual for mid October and remembered feeding ducks with my father, my grandmother. How fascinated I was by their squawking, their fast gobbling of the bread, their displeasure from greedy companions. All of a sudden, my beloved yoga teacher walked by! What a surprise. She lives near that path. I would see her in a few hours for class. She smiled at me, “This is one of my most favorite places to walk.” A gift sent by the universe, I thought, so that I might know I am not alone.

After, I was tired and hungry, for real, I realized this now. So ate a banana, drank sweet tea, sat in a large leather chair and let the loneliness engulf me. Despite the ducks and children, the warm sun, my teacher the loneliness was still in front of me. I entered the loneliness as fully as possible, felt with my hands the wet stone walls of this cave, the dripping mosses, the slippery planks. I sensed a spaciousness there and surprising room to breath. For a time the physical sensations and emotional sensations were so strong that I could not feel anything else. Only a part of me was still in the hotel so much of my gaze captivated by the inner otherworldly darkness, the rough stone walls, the damp air. I kept having to let go of wanting to be rescued by my saviors; desire, ruminations, thinking, doing. The pull of longing was so very strong until it wasn’t.

This journey ended well although this was not inevitable. I had yoga, afterall, and knew that the yoga would show me a way back to a warmer place, the inner path of connection. I don’t think I would have dared to go so fully into loneliness without this stop gap.